


I’ll Be Here In the Morning

by light_at_the_edge_of_the_sea



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 75,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26080414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_at_the_edge_of_the_sea/pseuds/light_at_the_edge_of_the_sea
Summary: The war ended, and the rest of their lives began.An exploration of Percy and Annabeth’s lives after Tartarus and the Giant War. Will try to update every other week.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 32
Kudos: 187





	1. The Return

**Author's Note:**

> These have been done to death, but so has everything else, so here we are. Begins immediately after Blood of Olympus, and treats Heroes of Olympus as the end of the series. I’m aware of the newer books, but this idea has been kicking around since I finished Blood of Olympus in college, and I have finally had the time to get it written out. Expect minor errors; this is a one-man operation. No warnings used, in order to avoid spoilers. 
> 
> I own none of the characters, settings, canon, etc. depicted here. All rights to RR.

The Return

The cab ride from Camp Half-Blood to Manhattan took an hour and a half at highway speeds. Usually, in Percy’s experience, it flew by. Excitement to get home to see his mom, or to return to Camp Half-Blood and his friends, sped the trip up. Not so tonight. He sat in the back of Argus’ magic taxi, staring out the window at the rolling farmland surrounding Camp. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken a word since he told the hundred-eyed driver where to go. 

Annabeth rode next to him, curled up in the middle of the faded bench seat. His left arm encircled her shoulders, holding her close. She’d been silent all evening, ever since she said her goodbyes to the demigods who remained at camp. And Chiron, of course, and Grover. Now she just leaned into him, eyes shut hard against the motion of the car. It didn’t help that she’d felt sick to her stomach since leaving Tartarus, and no amount of ambrosia or good food seemed to help. She said she was fine, of course, but Percy knew better. He’d followed her out behind the arena after the victory feast Chiron had insisted on holding in the Seven’s honor, had held her hair back while she retched up what little food she could stomach in the first place. He could feel how slight she’d become, just by holding her like he was doing now. Always thin, and shorter than him since last year, she’d lost the well-defined muscle that once marked her as an experienced fighter. Her shoulder blades jutted out from her back, even through her shirt. He could feel her ribs too easily, and her face was gaunt and sunken-cheeked. They’d practically starved in the pit, and, while Percy had done his best to make sure she ate as much as, if not more than he did, she seemed to have lost the most weight. 

It pained Percy to see Annabeth in her current state. The depths of Hell had been hard on them both. The dreams were the worst part. They both had nightmares by nature of their parentage, but both of them would have traded one of their new dreams for a thousand of those they’d had to deal with before Tartarus. These new ones were real. They took true events and twisted them, in ways that tricked his and Annabeth’s minds into believing that they were right back in the Underworld. As a result, they had practically shared a cabin for most of the journey home from Europe. Sleeping together didn’t help with the dreams themselves, but it made waking up easier. He wanted to draw her closer, get her in his lap and hold her properly, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully for once. Better not to wake her, he decided. Gods only knew when she’d get another chance to sleep like this. 

Farm fields surrendered to industrial lots and strip malls, flashing past in streaks of neon. Looking through the front window, Percy saw New York’s grand skyline rising before the taxi. Sunlight blasted the tallest skyscrapers, leaving the rest in shadow. The glass-and-steel behemoths were blindingly bright, and he had to look away before his retinas fried like eggs. Beside him, Annabeth twitched, then jerked awake. She looked at him, eyes wide as silver dollars, and buried her face in his chest. Her seatbelt stretched in protest, but she kept leaning in, dusty blonde curls falling onto his shoulder, and Percy put his other arm around her. He felt tears soak into his shirt. 

“Hey, you’re alright, you’re alright,” whispered in her ear, clutching her to him. “You’re safe, Annabeth, I’m here.” She sighed, and relaxed enough to let the tension out of her shoulders, but she didn’t move. He looked back out the window, trying to figure how far away from his mom’s apartment building they were. He recognized this part of town, a few blocks of brownstones and bodegas he’d passed through on the way to the school before the school before Goode, and decided that ten minutes sounded about right. “We’re almost home. I think I know about where we are.”

“Good.” Annabeth said, voice muffled by his shirt. She sat up, biting the inside of her cheek and looking around. “How long was I asleep?” 

Percy checked his watch, before realizing that he’d lost it at some point during the last few months. Before Tartarus, it must have been, or Annabeth would’ve used it to time the days and chart their progress through that glassy, poisoned place. She was smart like that, his wise girl, even in situations that made his mind shut down. Where he’d have gotten them both killed, were he the one doing the thinking. He kissed her on the forehead, lingering to stare into her stormcloud eyes. They were still a dull, glazed-over shade of flat grey, but they looked a little livelier than when they’d left camp. “No idea. Most of the trip.”

The taxi slammed to a halt, and Percy nearly took Annabeth with him as he slid forward. “Here y’ are, lovebirds.” Argus said, dropping the clutch and shoving the shift lever into neutral. Percy unlocked his door, stepped out, and helped Annabeth do the same. They had almost no luggage. Most of the clothing they’d left at camp when they travelled to Europe was packed into a single suitcase, one of Annabeth’s with room for his clothes and hers. The things they’d taken with them on the Argo II were lost, scattered across a mile of New York countryside. Aside from the suitcase, and Annabeth’s old backpack, they had nothing. Well, not quite. Riptide sat in Percy’s pocket, as always. He hadn’t drawn it since the final battle against Gaea, and didn’t intend to do so again until next summer at Camp, if he could help it. He’d had enough of fighting. Enough of killing monsters for a few centuries, at least, as if that mattered. For now, though, he was content to walk through the building’s lobby doors and head for the bank of elevators on the back wall. 

“Percy, no. Let’s take the stairs.” He looked over. Annabeth was as pale as she’d been when the death mists had almost taken them both, and she’d stopped cold in the middle of the lobby. 

“Yeah, of course. They’re around the corner.” Percy led the way, leading Annabeth by the hand. He didn’t blame her for being apprehensive about elevators, after their experience outside the Doors. He felt the same, if he was honest, but right now he was so bone tired that he didn’t know if he could make ten flights of stairs, let alone twenty-four. By now, though, he was too focused on getting up to his mom’s apartment without Annabeth collapsing that the elevator seemed a worse idea. 

Ten minutes later, Annabeth and Percy spilled onto the twenty-fourth landing. “Okay, I admit, the stairs were not my brightest idea,” Annabeth said between gulps of air. “Better a panic attack in the elevator than doing that again.” Percy smirked, or tried to. He hadn’t felt this winded since Tartarus. They stood, making sure they hadn’t dropped anything on the way up, and staggered into the main hallway. Percy knew the route by heart. His mom and Paul lived on the far end to the right of the elevators, which meant their door would be in the same direction, if slightly closer, thanks to where the stairs let out. Walking slowly for Annabeth’s benefit, Percy found the apartment and stopped outside, still waiting a second for her to catch up. She was still breathing too hard. He held his arm out, setting their suitcase down. She accepted the invitation, leaning into him for support. The added weight nearly staggered him, and he had to lean on the doorframe so he didn’t fall. Damn. Since when were they this out-of-shape? 

“Ready?” She asked. Percy wasn’t sure. He had tried contacting his mother more than once since he’d remembered who he was, but he had no idea whether any of his messages had arrived. He’d even tried an Iris-message from Camp just before they left, but the rainbow goddess was still recovering after the battle, and all she’d managed to summon was a mess of Technicolor static.

“As I’ll ever be, I guess.” He swallowed. “I just hope my mom doesn’t blame me too much for all this.” 

Annabeth grabbed his chin, turning him to face her. “Percy, she won’t blame you for a thing. She just wants you home.” She leaned in and kissed him, standing on her toes and pulling his head down. They broke apart, and she was crying. 

“Hey, what’s-“

“We did it, Percy, we made it. Gods, we made it.” She threw herself into him, and they stood in the hall for another long minute, reveling in each other’s presence. Then they heard the dead-bolt in Sally’s door slam open. Startled, they turned just in time to see the knob turn. 

The door opened, slow and uncertain. “Hello?” A man’s voice. Paul’s. He peeked his head out, and his eyes went wide. “Holy gods! Sally! Come here!” He threw the door open, and practically pulled Percy and Annabeth inside. Sally Jackson appeared in the kitchen doorway, a bowl in her hand, and screamed. The bowl fell to the tile, shattering and sending up a little mushroom cloud of flour. 

“Percy!” She shouted, nearly spilling over as she ran towards him. Her embrace hit with enough momentum to make a defensive lineman proud, and he staggered back. “Oh thank the gods, Percy!” He felt tears on his shirt, and then his arms were around her, holding her up while she did the same for him. 

She felt so small, Percy realized. The thought shook him. He hadn’t seen her in eight months. Then, they’d been almost of a height, but now he had a solid four inches on her. The time spent at Camp Jupiter, on the Argo II, and most recently in Tartarus, should have shrunk him. And he had lost muscle mass, grown thinner and less vital. He felt smaller than he had when he left, and yet here he stood. Towering over his mother. Then she was moving, guiding him over to the couch. Sitting him down next to Annabeth, who slumped into him, and he caught her, laying her head on his shoulder before she could crack her temple on the bone he knew was more prominent than it should’ve been. 

“Oh, Percy, what happened to you?” His mom was on her knees now, leaning in and inspecting his face and exposed arms. She reached out, hands ginger and tremoring, and brushed her fingers against the abrasion running from just behind his left eye to above and behind his ear. She was crying, and he reached out to her.

“Mom, mom, it’s all okay, I’m all right-“

“All right? Percy! You look like you’ve just been through hell, don’t tell me you’re all right!” Her hands were on his upper arms now, as if she couldn’t believe he was there and she had to make sure. “Gods, how long has it been since you’ve eaten? And Annabeth, oh, you poor girl,” she said, turning towards her and stroking the side of her neck, where the remains of the gash that had nearly cut her in half began. He set his jaw, remembering how he’d had to stifle Annabeth’s cries of pain so as to not make the wound worse while he tried to dress it. Percy shook his head. That was not a memory he was going to relive right now. He refused to, flat-out. Better to watch himself die with a spear in his gut than to have to hear her screaming like that. He looked over, seeking reassurance that Annabeth was still there. She was, and his mom had her wrapped in a hug. He let them be. Athena was never exactly the emotional type, and Annabeth’s stepmother was worse. He was more than likely the only person to have touched her with any measure of affection in the past few months, and the realization hurt him in a spot he’d sooner not be hurting. So he stood up, letting Annabeth and his mom have a moment, and looked around the apartment. 

Most everything was as it had been, aside from the new steel-and-glass coffee table. A picture of him and Annabeth, from when they’d spent the week in New York right after the Titan War, sat propped on the bookshelf. He barely recognized himself. The boy in the photo was shorter, cleaner, with hair that didn’t look like he’d styled it with a large knife. Annabeth looked healthy, trim but filled-out. How had she gone from that to the bony, underweight girl who’d met him at Camp Jupiter? He hadn’t realized until now just how much the past eight months had changed them. Really, he didn’t even feel like he’d been gone that long. The time he spent out West had passed in a blur, and the Giant War had gone even faster. Constant stress and uncertainty made events stretch as they occurred, but compressed them in memory. Except for Tartarus. It was so typical, just so absolutely fucking perfect that what happened in the two weeks or so they’d been down there felt like an eternity stretched into the infinite. He’d always been relatively lucky when it came to bad memories. It wasn’t that he didn’t recall the worst of his experiences. He’d sat at the table in the next room on more than a few bad nights, forcing half-formed visions of Luke Castellan back into the ether so he could at least try to sleep. But Greek Hell, as Jason had started calling it, broke the rules Percy thought he knew. He remembered everything like it was still happening. Maybe a third of the times he tried sleeping, he found himself face-to-face with Annabeth as she drowned in the Cocytus, or tried to hold him up while they fought off the spirits of monsters they’d already killed. And these dreams didn’t just render true events, they altered them. Turned the screws of his memory just enough so that, instead of helping Annabeth across death’s threshold while their friends held the way open with fire and sword, he felt her hand slip out of his as a great spider-creature dragged her back down. The close call she’d had with a drakon turned into her dying with half her face burnt away. His combat with Akhlys went from the one time he’d truly scared himself with his own abilities to some kind of twisted awakening in which he tore the goddess of misery apart, harnessing the water present in her very cells and loving every minute of it. He shook his head. There was no sense reliving what he already had to watch play out in agonizing color. So he set the picture down, turning around to see his stepdad standing behind him. 

Paul had a full beard now, well-trimmed and worn short. He raised an arm and Paul waved back, looking as stunned as Percy felt. They embraced, Percy again surprised at his newfound height.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” Paul said, holding Percy by both shoulders. “Sally and I both. We hadn’t thought, well, we-“

“You thought we were dead.” 

Paul didn’t even flinch. He stared Percy straight in the eyes, and nodded. “The feeling was there, ever since we stopped hearing from Annabeth. I don’t think I have ever been happier to be wrong in my life.” He slapped Percy on the shoulder. “But you’re back, and that’s all that matters.” He kept his hand where it landed, looking at Percy through tear-filled eyes. They stood for a while in that position, saying nothing, until he backed up, turning to look at Sally and Annabeth. “And how is Annabeth? It looks like she came through all right, but..”

“She’s, well, she’s hurting. So am I, but that isn’t a new feeling. I think it may be, for her.” She had always been the strong one in their relationship, a fact which he suspected derived from her hard upbringing. One did not leave home at age seven and fight her way across monster-infested country without becoming stronger for her trouble. Much as it hurt him in a very sensitive place, the fact was that Annabeth’s life had always been harder than his, and she was mentally tougher than him as a result. Until now. He’d taken her strength for granted, but then she’d been through Arachne and Tartarus. And they had broken her. The sheer amount of bad shit she’d experienced, most of which he couldn’t shield her from, had overwhelmed her defenses. And when fortifications as heavily-built as hers broke, they collapsed. He could see it in how she carried herself. Before, even when she’d found him in California, she’d always stood tall and confident, shoulders back and head held high. By the time they stepped into the elevator up from Hades, those same shoulders had taken on a perpetual hunch. One he hadn’t seen since right after she’d been forced to hold up the sky. Her grey eyes, once darting and bright, took on a dull, warmed-over sheen that reminded him of a wall of fog.

“Percy.”

He blinked, snapped out of his head. Paul had been saying something he hadn’t heard. “Sorry.”

Paul half-smiled. “It’s all right.” It wasn’t, of course, and one look at his stepfather told him they both knew that. “Anyway, you look starved.” 

That got Percy to grin. He’d smelled pasta cooking when he came in, and, much as he enjoyed the food at Camp, he hadn’t had a good home-cooked meal in too long. “Paul, you have no idea.”

Ten minutes later, all four of them sat around the little kitchen table, Sally’s patented spaghetti piled high on their plates. She’d breathlessly explained that she always made enough for leftovers, and never had Percy been more glad for extra food in his life. The sauce, a rich, beefy marinara, was exactly how he remembered from before his disappearance. No one spoke, perhaps out of deference to the fact that neither Percy nor Annabeth could do much talking at the moment. He looked over to his girlfriend, watching as she gulped down sauce and noodles. He hoped she could keep them down. Her features had always been prominent, but looking at her face in this light betrayed just how much the last month had cost her. High, beautiful cheekbones sat proud on her face, and the sight was too similar to how she’d looked in the death-mist for comfort. He felt himself reaching out towards her, brushing his fingers against her shoulder. They met skin and bone, too brittle for his comfort but real nonetheless. She turned and smiled at him through a mouthful of red sauce and pasta, and for a moment he felt almost normal. Then she turned back down to her plate, and the long scar his mom had spotted flashed on her neck. He grimaced at the sight. Nectar had healed the wound itself, in the Argo II’s sick bay, but he’d had to clean it with the small amounts of water he could dredge up for the three days between when she’d been hurt and when they left Tartarus. The inevitable infection, combined with the stresses of movement and combat, had made the cut heal badly when it did. The scar it left was still an angry red against her too-pale skin. 

They finished in silence, each of them cleaning their plates. Paul cleared the table, gathering up plates and glasses and dumping them in the sink. Percy’s mom ushered him and Annabeth onto the couch. Paul and Sally took up seats in the two easy chairs across the room. 

“Thanks for cooking, Mrs. Jackson.” Annabeth broke the silence.

His mom smiled, but she stayed downcast. “I feel bad; if I’d known you were coming I could have done more, but...”

“That’s our fault, mom.” Percy said. “We never had a spare minute during the quest, and afterwards Iris was too weak to send messages so anything we tried just ended up as static.”

“Annabeth told me about you and Hera and the Romans, but other than that message you sent, I, well I had no idea what had happened to you.” She sounded close to tears, and Paul stood up, walking over and sitting with her. She continued. “What happened after you left for Greece? Annabeth said that’s where she was going after the Parthenos, but then she went dark.”

So they talked. Annabeth told of her quest for the Athena Parthenos, of splitting up in Kansas so Percy could lead the search for Nico Di Angelo, and of her near-confrontation with Reyna. Percy described his role in the search for Nico, which culminated in the defeat of Otis and Ephialtes. They both recounted their time aboard the Argo II, describing the trip through the Mediterranean to Rome. Sally sat there in Paul’s arms, absorbing everything they said. She never once spoke up, which surprised Percy. She had always been curious, always one to ask more than the bare minimum about how his day was, or what he was doing at camp, or when Annabeth would be visiting next. For her to sit in silence like this was new and uncomfortable. Add one more thing to that list, he thought.

By now, they’d reached the part of their story that Percy dreaded telling. Reliving Tartarus when he slept was bad enough, but inflicting it on his mom and Paul felt wrong. He was a demigod. At the end of the day, that meant he had a basic understanding of certain things that mortals just didn’t have space in their minds for. Sally and Paul knew about his world, but their knowledge was based on what he, and Annabeth to an extent, told them. If he explained Tartarus, they would almost certainly be worse off for it. But he couldn’t not tell them, could he? How could he explain the nightmares they both had, without naming the source? Annabeth waking up screaming, or him not sleeping at all, couldn’t be passed off as just another demigod dream when it happened on most nights. Much as he hated it, they had no choice but to continue.

Annabeth squeezed his hand, bringing him back to the present. She’d just described what had occurred leading up to her meeting Arachne, and Percy found that he’d pulled her onto his lap without even thinking. 

“I thought I had her dead to rights,” Annabeth was saying, an edge of anger in her voice. She still blamed herself for them falling, Percy knew. She’d apologized all the way down, despite his insistence that she had not, would not, could not ever have been to blame for the fix they were in. He had followed her because it was the only thing he had ever wanted to do. Even so, he knew she worried that his parents would blame her for everything once they heard the full story, and he held her closer as her tale edged closer to the fateful moment.

“I knocked her into the pit, and we all thought that was it. Arachne was dead, we survived.”

“Was that it?” Sally asked, her voice as quiet and uncertain as he’d ever heard it. 

“No.” Percy said. 

“Arachne somehow got a strand of silk around my ankle, and when it went taut it, well, it dragged me in.” She said it softly, barely audible above the traffic noise outside. Sally’s eyes widened, and she reached for a tissue to add to the small pile by her chair. 

“My gods, Annabeth! You fell?”

“Us. We fell. Percy grabbed my arm and Nico grabbed his, and Percy made him promise to find the Doors of Death. Then Nico let go. He had to.” She was shaking hard, shivering like she was fresh from the Cocytus instead of sitting in a climate-controlled apartment. Percy grabbed for the blanket that lay across the couch’s backrest and threw it over them both, his arms around Annabeth.

His mom said nothing for a long moment. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were somewhere else for a moment, and when they returned she seemed to follow them, standing up and striding to the couch, before sitting next to the two demigods. Her arms barely fit around them both, but none of them cared. Paul sat in the easy chair, unsure of what to do, until Sally waved him over and he joined as well. 

They stayed like that for a while, Sally quietly sobbing. Eventually, they broke apart, though all remained on the couch. Sally spoke first, voice teary and uncertain. 

“You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to. You’re here, and you’re safe, and as far as I’m concerned that’s all that matters.”

Percy squeezed Annabeth’s hand. She relaxed, shaking less now than she had been. She turned in his arms, eyes meeting his. 

“Percy,” she said, voice raw, “I don’t think I can do this, but your parents... they need to know. Can you tell it?”

“Of course, Wise Girl. My bedroom’s just down the hallway, if you want to-“

“No.” She grabbed on and held on. 

He adjusted his grip on her, cradling her to his chest. And then he dove back into the Pit of Hell all over again.

“We landed in the Cocytus, the river of lamentation.” He saw Paul cringe. “Made it to shore, barely, and ended up almost dying of poisoned air anyway.” He almost smirked at that, the sheer absurdity of crawling out of the river of bitterness onto a shore made of literal broken glass and covered in toxic mist almost breaking through the pain of the memory. Annabeth would have probably made some joke about irony, had she not been down there herself. 

He described their journey to the Phlegethon, and the fire they’d had to drink to heal themselves. When he reached Arachne’s second attack, he felt Annabeth tense up, then relax almost immediately. She spoke up, voice a little muffled by the blanket. 

“If there’s one good thing to come out of this, I’m definitely not scared of spiders anymore.” 

He couldn’t help but smile, and that moment of levity gave him the willpower to keep going. The fact that Annabeth, even caught inside her own mind like she was, could still show flashes of her old irreverent self, gave him hope. She’d be alright, even if it would take a while for her to get there. No one as strong as Annabeth Chase got knocked down for long, and seeing her start to get back up was heartening.

Percy’s tale continued, and, though he made sure to avoid describing just how badly hurt they’d both been by the time they ended up taking shelter in a Titan’s bed for the night, he could tell that his mom and Paul saw through his omissions. How could they not? The wound on Annabeth’s neck was obvious to anyone, and he looked like he’d bashed his way through a concrete block using only his head. 

He did his best to explain Bob and Damasen. Finding aid from a Titan and a giant was not something he had thought possible for a pair of demigods, but it had happened, and he felt that they deserved to have their stories head. “We would have died, were it not for Bob. He never saw us as enemies, just let us have a night of peace, and food, and warmth. And that probably saved us.”

“What happened to him?” His mom asked.

“I’ll get to that.” He glossed over their final flight across the barren approaches to the Doors, trying to avoid details when possible. The death-mists and the arai managed to get into his head and stay there nonetheless. Even an oblique reference to how Annabeth had looked once she’d stepped into the fog, or the way she’d stumbled away from him, cursed and blinded and alone, made him want to find Calypso and take her head as a trophy. He hoped she never found her way off Ogygia, because, much as he hated what he had done to the Goddess of Poison, he would gladly do the same to Calypso.

Percy realized then that he couldn’t avoid talking about Akhlys forever. Annabeth would understand, of course, but letting that part of their journey go unspoken would weigh on him. He’d been raised to tell the truth, all of it, and leaving out his own failings would solve nothing. 

“I wanted to kill her. And I could have.” Even to his own ears, Percy sounded detached. Like a doctor describing a surgery. “Even gods have water in their cells, and that means I can control it.” He laid his head back, staring at the ceiling. Sure that Annabeth, or his parents, or both, were looking at him in horror. “But Annabeth brought me back. Talked me down. If she isn’t there, then... well, I have no idea.” It was all he could do to examine the ceiling, to count the stains left over from the previous inhabitant that the landlord hadn’t managed to fully remove. He spotted one that looked a lot like a dog, tongue out and ears flopping around, and tried to trace the edges in his mind, anything to get it off the track of memory it currently ran down.

“Percy? Percy. Hey.” He looked down, and there was Annabeth, lying in his lap and looking concerned. “You alright?”

Pursing his lips, he exhaled. “No. Not really. I tortured a woman. And I liked it, even if it was just for a second. What the hell does that make me?”

“It makes you human, Percy.” Paul spoke for the first time since he’d begun describing Tartarus. “The important thing is that you stepped back. Thought better of what you were doing.”

“If Annabeth hadn’t been there-“ 

“What-ifs mean nothing. Nothing at all.” Paul looked straight at him, an odd, tight-lipped smile crossing his face. “All anyone can do is live with the past.”

“It just feels so wrong, now that I’m through it. Like, that isn’t what I’m supposed to be.”

“It isn’t what you are, sweetie, not at all.” His mom said, leaning closer and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You came back to us, and you did it without losing yourself. That’s more than than anyone can ask.”

Percy sighed. He forced himself back into the present, made himself remember where he was and what he was doing. “Yeah. Not a good feeling, is all.”

“It won’t be, for a long time,” Paul said. “Believe me.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I’ll tell you about it someday. But not now. It’s nothing compared to what you and Annabeth had to do.”

“Agreed.” Paul, for all his unassuming kindness, seemed to understand more about what Percy was describing than he let on. What had he done, to have any idea what any of this was like? 

Percy forced himself onward from Akhlys. He described arriving at the Doors, and how they’d realized only then that someone would have to stay behind. How Bob had volunteered. How he’d asked only that they remember him when they looked up at the stars.

“And then the doors closed, and we rode the elevator up. Jason and Piper and Nico and the others were holding the way open when we got up, and thank the gods for it, because we weren’t in any shape to fight.”

The telling of events after his and Annabeth’s return from Tartarus passed like an afterthought. Confrontations with Gaea’s forces in Rome, and their successor at Camp, would all stick in his memory forever, but compared to the Pit, they felt like minor diversions. He hated the fact that he could think of Leo’s death, and of the close scrapes he and Annabeth and their friends had all experienced, as secondary to something else, but that truly was how they seemed. Even at its worst, the battle at Camp had paled in comparison to his close shave with Akhlys, or Annabeth and her duel with Arachne. 

“And that’s what happened.” He said, finishing off what he suddenly realized had been a solid hour and a half of stories and explanations. 

His mom turned to face him. He’d expected her to be crying, but her eyes were dry when they met his. She said nothing for a long, horrible moment, then she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Percy. You have to know that we are so, so proud of you. Paul and I both.” Percy saw him nod, an odd little half-smile on his face. Like he’s proud of his son. A voice from somewhere in his head said. Could that be possible? Paul, accepting him as more than just a stepchild who lived with his wife? Two years ago, he’d have scoffed and called that impossible. Now? He wasn’t sure. 

“We’re just glad you both made it home in one piece,” Paul said, voice heavy with concern. That confirmed Percy’s suspicion. He really did care. 

“Annabeth?” Sally’s voice made her stir in Percy’s lap. “Do you want to stay here?”

She sat up, looking even more miserable than she had when Percy described Iapetus’ death. “What? No, Sally, I can’t do that to you, you barely have any room as it is. I can go back to camp, it’ll be fine. Or, I don’t know, maybe I can talk to my dad and he can-“

“But do you want to do any of that?” Percy heard a hardness in her voice that hadn’t been there since he was much younger, maybe even before he first went to camp. She was talking to Annabeth the way she’d spoken to him when he came home from school with a bruise or a torn pant-leg, or when he got in trouble for fighting and they both knew he’d been in the right.

“No.” She shook her head, hair tangling in the blanket. 

“Then you are more than welcome to stay here,” Sally said. “For as long as you want.”

Annabeth was shaking again, and Percy could do nothing but hold her. “You mean that?” 

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Which is why, when I tell you that I love you like any other child of mine, I hope you know that I mean that just as much.” And  
then Annabeth sprang from where she sat, falling into Sally‘s arms. Percy watched, and felt himself tearing up for the first time that night. He glanced across the couch at Paul, who sat, rubbing his mom’s shoulder and looking a little shell-shocked. He clamped his jaw shut, getting this latest rush of emotion under control. He didn’t want to hold it back. He wanted to shove his head under a pillow and scream until he went deaf. Or maybe take Riptide to a few dozen training dummies. Even talking about Tartarus had been an ordeal, albeit one he gladly took on so that Annabeth didn’t have to. She deserved none of this, and if reducing the load she had to carry meant handling his own problems in private, then that was life. 

An hour later, Percy stepped out of the shower. He had never felt this refreshed, not even after a nice dip in Long Island Sound. The dirt, sweat, and grime of Tartarus and ten other places, along with a decent amount of dried blood, hadn’t been washed off by the half-hearted swim he took a day before leaving Camp. Being in the water, even this small amount, released some of the mental tension that had built up during his recounting of his and Annabeth’s time in the Underworld, and the ball of lead in his chest felt just a bit lighter for it. 

The conversation had largely died down after Annabeth had accepted Sally’s offer of a place to stay, and, while Percy had no idea how they would all fit in the little two-bedroom, he didn’t much care at this point. Knowing that Annabeth might have had to leave as soon as they arrived, to go back to Camp, or, worse, all the way across the country, had scared him since before they’d gotten in Argus’ cab, and now he could breathe easy. She’d even called her dad and told him her plans, saying that she planned to attend school in New York for the year. Mr. Chase had objected, of course, and Annabeth had overruled him in the way only she could. He knew she loved her father. What she didn’t want was to be, in her words, “forced back into some girls’ school because my stepmom thinks I’m too tomboyish, whatever in Hades that means.” He didn’t see how anyone could accuse Annabeth and her beautiful princess-curly hair of tomboyishness, but that was beside the point. Maybe it was the jeans and t-shirts she wore more out of habit than anything else? He shrugged, standing in front of the mirror. He could always take her shopping in a few days. Finally, they had nothing but time.

Paul had found a spare razor for him, and, for the first time in his life, he needed one. The peach fuzz he’d grown at fifteen was no more, replaced with short, bristly stubble that reminded him of Poseidon’s own beard when he decided to wear it short. Not the worst trait to inherit, he supposed, but he liked being clean-shaven. So, much to Annabeth’s delight, off came the beard. She said it felt scratchy, which he supposed was fair given how delicate her skin could be. The razor was one Paul said he hadn’t used since college, back when, in his words, he had thought shaving with a straight razor like James Bond was the coolest thing in the world. His mom had objected, worried that Percy would cut himself, but pointing out that he used a sword on a weekly basis had solved that problem. Besides, he thought, what’s one more cut? He hadn’t seen a mirror since the Argo II, and, now that he had one and the time to use it, he realized just how much damage Tartarus and the following battles had done. Atop the various scars and badly-healed abrasions he already had, he counted one long laceration down his left side, three of what looked like shrapnel wounds but were actually the results of Gaia’s insistence on throwing rocks at people, a gash above his temple, and two claw-marks on his shoulder from one of the hellhounds they’d fought in the Pit. He knew there had been more, but the triplet miracles of nectar, ambrosia, and his natural affinity for water had healed most of them completely.

The real problem, of course, wasn’t the scarring itself. He was underweight by maybe twenty pounds. Before his swan-dive into Hell, he’d been six feet flat and weighed maybe one-eighty. Most of that was muscle, centered in his core, shoulders, and legs. All places that sword work exercised. Now, sinew replaced bulk. He knew the old mass would return, with time and training and plenty of his mom’s cooking, but he also knew that Annabeth liked how he’d looked before. Not that she would mind, of course. No one who knew her could accuse her of shallowness. But that wasn’t the point. Would seeing how much weight he’d dropped remind her of where they’d been? Probably. Seeing her after Tartarus did the same for him. She’d lost more weight than he, proportionally, and given that she hadn’t been able to keep food down until tonight, he doubted she would be gaining much back for a while. Annabeth had always been thin, a side effect of running from literal hell-beasts for most of her childhood, but seeing her now was striking. She’d lost the curves that had just started showing before he disappeared to Camp Jupiter, and he missed those dearly. Seeing her ribcage and shoulder blades sticking out as she dressed in the cabin they’d shared-by-default on the Argo II had frightened him, not that he let that fact on.

Percy had been so lost in thought that, when he finished scraping the stubble from his chin, he realized he’d cut himself. Not badly, but a rivulet of blood now ran down to his collarbone. He grinned. His mom really was always right, wasn’t she? A splash of hot water closed the cut and dealt with the blood. He toweled off, not something he usually did, but the towels were fresh from the dryer, and he wasn’t one to pass up warm linens. An old Camp t-shirt and basketball shorts went on after that, and he stepped out of the bathroom so Annabeth could have a go. Sharing one restroom among four people would probably get cramped, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Annabeth was here, with him, and she wasn’t going anywhere. That alone was good for a grin, the first real one in a while. 

“What are you smiling about, Seaweed Brain?”

He opened his eyes, and there she stood, bony shoulders and all. She carried a towel and a change of clothes, plus a spare toothbrush. 

“You,” he said, taking her in his arms. She was still shivering, less now than before. “Here, with me, and not run off on some wild kraken chase.”

She snorted. “At this point I couldn’t handle one if I wanted to.” Her hand found the back of his neck. “It is nice, though, knowing that you’ll be here when I wake up.”

“Always.” He kissed her forehead.

“I love you, Percy.” She leaned into him, head on his shoulder.

“And I love you.” He set his chin on her forehead and inhaled. She smelled like Annabeth, which sounded stupid as soon as he thought it. Of course she does, dumbass. But he didn’t know how else to describe the light, almost musky smell she gave off after a fight, or a long day in the sun. “I’m done in the shower, if you want a go.”

“What I really need is a nice bath, but I can shower first and get the grime off. See you when I’m done?” 

“I’ll be right out here.” He squeezed her shoulder, and she shut the bathroom door behind her.

His mom was back in the living room, setting up the couch for Annabeth. “Hopefully she doesn’t mind the mattress. It’s thin, but she hasn’t minded before.”

Percy held a hand up. “She’ll sleep in my room.”

She looked up. “Percy,” she said, “it isn’t that I don’t trust you, and I know you’ve probably done it before, but I don’t know what her father would say, and-“

“Mom!” Up went the other hand. “I figured you’d want one of us to take the couch; that isn’t the problem. I just want to make sure she gets my bed. It’s more comfortable, and I can sleep on anything.”

She smiled, a little sadly, and shook her head. “Oh, Percy, you are entirely too noble. All right, as long as you’re both comfortable.”

“Well, loyalty is my fatal flaw.”

She looked up at him, eyes wet all of a sudden. “Can we, just, not talk about anything fatal tonight? I only want to feel good about you being back here.”

“Aw, mom, I’m sorry!” He opened his arms, and she stepped into the embrace. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. I know. It’s just- you were gone for so long, that-“

“I’m not, though, and after all this I don’t ever want to be.”

They stood in silence for a while. Then Annabeth called out from the bathroom, and his head snapped around, hand going to his pocket. His mom stepped away, brow furrowed. He strode to the bathroom door.

“Annabeth, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing, I just realized I forgot my hairbrush. Does your mom have one I can borrow?”

His mom had followed him down the hall. “Oh, I have an extra, but it’s kind of hard to reach. Want me to get it? I’d have to come in, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, uh, sure!” Annabeth said. 

Sally cracked the door, slipping inside and closing it before Percy had a chance to peek. Did she think he’d see something he hadn’t before? He shook his head, laughing to himself. He and Annabeth had been dating for months now, and even had they not been, her drakon-claw chest wound had needed bandaging. Moms, he figured. He really was not looking forward to sleeping apart from Annabeth, but he understood his mom’s position and couldn’t really do much about it in any case. Besides, if either of them woke up, the other was just a room away. Not ideal, but far from as bad as things had been. 

He found his room about as he’d left it, all those months ago. He must have done some cleaning before he disappeared, or his mom had rearranged, because the floor was visible and his clothes were all in a pile that one might call neat by demigod standards. Either way, there was a clear path to the foot of his bed, and he didn’t see anything that Annabeth might trip over in the night. He couldn’t confirm his suspicions because bringing up the curse-demons was something neither of them especially enjoyed, but he thought she’d lost some of her night vision after going blind. Children of Athena had a natural ability to see in the dark, thanks mostly to their godly mother’s affinity with owls. Annabeth said she could still see in pitch-black conditions, but sounded less sure of herself than she had been before Tartarus. Satisfied, he shut the light off and headed for the kitchen.

His mother was there, cleaning up the dishes. “Need a hand?” He asked, grabbing a glass from the counter.

“You, asking to help with the dishes? What has Annabeth done to you?”

“You can blame Leo for that one, actually. Dishwasher on the Argo II broke and he made us all help with the dishes on pain of not getting dinner.” Leo. The poor kid hadn’t deserved what he got. He and his stupid, grating, narcissistic sense of humor had been beyond annoying, until it wasn’t. After Tartarus, after Nico had left, the son of Hephaestus had been the one person on the ship who seemed to have any idea of what Percy and Annabeth were going through, which had been both surprising and a little disturbing. What could someone his age have seen that made him consider Tartarus and say “I get it?”

“I’d have liked to have met Leo, I think.” 

“He’d have driven you crazy.” 

His mom laughed. “Percy, I dealt with you and Grover Underwood at age twelve. From what you and Annabeth have said, Leo needed a hug and a glass of milk more than anything else.”

“Oh, come on. We can’t have been that bad!”

“Well, you did get into a lot of trouble. After all, who else could have vaporized their math teacher?” She kept her expression deadpan, but Percy heard the levity coming through. 

“To be honest, she’d have deserved it even if she wasn’t a harpy.”

“Well, she was pretty rude the one time I talked to her.”

Percy put the last glass in the dishwasher. He reached for a pan on the stovetop, planning to scrub the remains of the beef out. 

“Wait, I’ll handle that one. It’s cast iron, you’ll mess up the seasoning.”

He stopped, one hand grasping the soap. “Seasoning?”

“Yeah, the coat that keeps food from sticking. Soap’ll ruin it. Here, watch.” She grabbed a salt shaker from the cabinet, and added enough salt to the pan to make a neat little pile in the middle. After turning on the hot water, she started scrubbing the salt around the pan, using the water to wash out what was left of the meat. “There you go, now you can make bacon and clean up after.”

Percy had to stop himself from checking the fridge for some of the stuff. Since Tartarus, anything resembling rich food had made him nauseous, and Annabeth’s troubles meant that they‘d both avoided most of what he enjoyed eating. After tonight, though, he felt like he could devour a horse. Well, not a horse. He’d never live that down, not if Blackjack or Chiron found out. “Maybe tomorrow. For now, I’m beat.”

“You’ll do no such thing. I just got you back; you can’t expect me to let you cook for yourself.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright.” At this point, any bacon sounded good. “Sure is good to have some real food, though. Annabeth really hasn’t been eating before tonight.”

Concern flashed across his mom’s face. He mentally kicked himself. “She’ll be fine, now that she has real food to eat and not whatever we could shove in the storerooms on the Argo.”

“I’m sure. But it’s still worrisome, seeing how thin you both are.“ She sighed, staring up past his head. “It’s just good to have you back.”

They embraced, Sally Jackson and her prodigal son, standing in the kitchen with the water still running. It struck Percy that he’d been in this same position just under a year ago. He really had thought that his life would calm down after the Titan War. How wrong he’d been. But now? He had to allow himself a measure of hope. He was here. Annabeth was here, and she wasn’t running off across the country any time soon. His mom and Paul weren’t going anywhere, either. If ever there was a chance to feel even a little normal, this was it. 

The bathroom door squeaked open, halting Percy’s train of thought. Annabeth entered the kitchen, hair brushed out, wearing one of his Yankees shirts and a set of his mom’s sweatpants. The dirt she’d brought back from Rome and beyond was gone. Her golden hair shone in the kitchen lights, freed from the powderlike dust that Tartarus had left behind. The wound running down from her neck still passed between her exposed collarbones, disappearing beneath the hem of her shirt, but it looked cleaner. Less infected with whatever had gotten in when the drakon had nearly sliced her in two. 

Percy had to bite down on his tongue to force himself back to the present. His mom had immediately jumped to fussing over Annabeth, so Percy set to scrubbing out the remaining dishes. He forced himself to focus on the steaming water running over his hands, scalding and healing in the same moment, and drawing his attention away from anything even remotely reminiscent of that evil wound. He knew she was self-conscious about it. Who wouldn’t be? He’d have to take care to show her that it didn’t bother him, because it truly had no bearing on how he saw her. He realized then that someone had shut the water off. His hands steamed, red and raw and returning to normal before his eyes.

“Seaweed Brain, I think it’s clean.” Annabeth’s hands were around his waist, pulling him towards her. “Have to be careful, you’ll scald yourself.”

“For about half a second. Son of the Sea God, remember?”

“Still.” Her arms encircled him, and he let himself relax. She was here. Alive, despite his inability to keep her unhurt. That would have to do for now. 

“How was the bath?” He asked, trying to change the subject. He was vaguely aware of his mom retreating into the living room, letting them have some space. 

“Good. I haven’t felt this clean in months.” She was smiling when he turned around in her arms, and he couldn’t help but do the same. 

“And how’s your neck?” His fingers brushed the ridged skin just below her jawline. She flinched, and he moved his hand away, caressing her shoulder. 

“Stiff, but a bath helped.” She let herself fall into his chest, and he held her there. Felt her breathing slow as she relaxed. “And now,” she said through a yawn, “it’s time for bed. I might just fall asleep here, but the couch seems more comfortable.”

“Oh, I’m taking the couch.” He half-turned, leading Annabeth towards the hallway. “My bed’s got the better mattress, so consider it yours.”

She frowned in the half-light. “Percy, I’ll be fine anywhere. You don’t have to give up your room for me.”

“I don’t have to, but I will.” They arrived in his bedroom, and he flipped the lights on. Annabeth sat on the bed, and Percy pulled the covers up so she could climb under. Once she’d curled up between the blankets, he sat on the edge of the mattress.. 

“Going to be alright?”

She frowned, glancing up at him. “It’d be better if you were right here, but the next room is better than across the country.”

“I‘ll be just a few steps that way,” Percy replied, looking towards the door. “And I’ll come if you call.”

“Good. Gods, at this point I feel like I could sleep for days. Not like it’ll happen.” Annabeth grimaced. 

“If you wake up, you know where I’ll be.” He kissed her forehead, and lay next to her. “I don’t think anyone will care if I stay here ‘til you fall asleep, though.”

“Would you?”

“Always.”

Annabeth yawned, and Percy felt her shoulders loosen. “I love you, Percy.” She said, sleep thick in her voice.

“I love you too, Annabeth.” Saying that always gave him a little rush, deep in his chest, and this time was no different. He lay there with her, feeling her breathing slow, until her arms went slack around his and she drifted off to sleep. He waited a minute more, then kissed the back of her neck and slid out of his bed, flipping the lights off and slowly closing the door. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted her with him, close to him. A room away was no real difference, he knew, but, gods damn it, he just wanted her. Well, no one could complain if they cuddled on the couch all day tomorrow. 

The pull-out bed was laid out for him when he arrived in the living room, and his mom was adding spare blankets. “Annabeth in bed?” She asked. 

“Yeah. Hopefully she doesn’t wake up, but she‘s beyond tired so I don’t think she will.” 

“Does she have trouble sleeping?”

“Less so than me. I have a bad dream, I just don’t sleep. She’ll sleep through it, then wake up and not know where she is, or whether what she dreamt was real.”

“Oh, Annabeth.” His mom wiped at her eyes. “That must be horrible. For both of you.”

“It isn’t good. I can handle not sleeping, but her in pain like that isn’t... it isn’t right.” 

“None of this is right, sweetie, but it’s going to get there.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “For now, you being home is more than enough for me.”

“Yeah. Agreed there.” He climbed into bed, suddenly feeling the weight of all four hours of sleep he’d had in the last three days. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

His mother smiled, looking more hopeful than she had all night. “Well, don’t do that. You’ll miss breakfast!” She leaned down, planting a kiss on his forehead like he was ten years old again. “I love you, Percy. Try and get some sleep.”

“Love you too, mom.” He said, through a yawn. She smiled over her shoulder, looking back as she left the living room. Percy adjusted the pillow, flipping it so the cool side was up. The lights went out, and his eyelids suddenly felt every hour of sleep he’d missed since she was last here. He let them sink shut, not wanting to fight what he knew would come anyway. He was safe. Had to be, because if home wasn’t safe, then he was truly lost. The other side of the bed was too cold and too empty, but Annabeth was close, and that would have to be enough. Sleep came without warning, and Percy let it take him. His last conscious thought was of Annabeth, smiling at him as they walked along the beach at Camp, and he let the warmth flooding through him carry his mind into the nether.


	2. Everything I Touch Turns to Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Percy and Annabeth go to the shops. Shorter chapter, but I didn't think the first and third chapters would work without something in the middle. Title is from a song off Woods of Ypres' Green Album.

Morning came as soon as Percy realized he’d fallen asleep. Light streamed through the window, sun still low enough to turn the western wall a fiery red-orange. He stretched, his spine cracking and snapping as it straightened. This pull-out couch really did need an extra cushion. His bed, just a room over, was far softer. But this one would have been even harder on Annabeth. She hadn’t woken up as far as he knew, which hopefully implied that she’d slept at least somewhat better than normal. 

Rolling off the mattress, Percy stood. Bare feet cold on varnished hardwood, he padded to the bathroom. As he passed the kitchen, he checked the time on the oven clock. 8:32. Later than he’d slept since he was last in this apartment. Probably more than he’d slept, too, given the endless nights that questing always seemed to entail. Finishing in the bathroom, he soaked his hands and ran them through his hair, letting the cold water running down his neck and forehead hold his attention for a moment. The ritual was one he’d picked up on the  _ Argo II,  _ something to wake his nerves up for the day. He didn’t think the water actually did anything besides feel good, but it certainly did that. Today was no exception. He shook his hair dry, and strode back to the living room. Falling back asleep wasn’t something he usually managed, so he closed the curtains to keep out the blazing sunrise and turned on the television. Like almost everything he’d enjoyed before his adventure in amnesia, TV felt just a little foreign now. Having the time to sit down and stare at anything had been rare since Hera wiped his memory. Now, he felt the teenage laziness he’d enjoyed after the Titan War begin to return. He dropped the volume close to zero, not wanting to wake anyone else. Morning talk shows bored him to tears, so he scrolled through the channels until he found what looked like a Formula One race. He knew the series raced on Sundays thanks to Frank, who enjoyed the sport and had once explained it to him over dinner at Camp Jupiter, so this Friday morning action must have been a practice run. He sat back, letting the engine noise and British-accented commentary wash over him. Trying to focus on anything that was actually happening wouldn’t be possible for a while, probably not until he ate breakfast. His ADHD had settled down after Tartarus, but it still played around the edge of his thoughts. If nothing else, the cars roaring around a track through what looked like deep forest gave him plenty to get distracted by. 

He was watching a crane lift a crumpled red-and-white machine over the track fence when his bedroom door creaked open. He turned to the hallway, startled out of half-lucidity, and there stood Annabeth. Her hair lay flat and wavy against her shoulders, like she’d been sweating, and the bags under her eyes told him that she hadn’t slept much at all. He stood up, and met her in the middle of the room. She felt fragile in his arms, but he squeezed her to him anyway. 

“Hey,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips. She tasted salty, like she’d just gotten out of the water at Camp. Her shirt was soaked, and it stuck to her clammy skin when he put an arm around her. 

“You all right? You’re sweating like crazy.” He guided her to the couch, letting her sit before he flopped back down and held the blanket up for her. “Is my room too hot?”

“No,” she said as she slid under the sheets. “AC was on, and I opened the window for a breeze, but nothing helped. Guess being hot in a dream means I sweat now.”

“Well, you’re always hot,” Percy said, leaning in for another kiss, “so that isn’t new.” 

Annabeth laughed and shoved him back. “Watch it, Seaweed Brain, or I’ll start to think you like me!”

“That ship came in a long time ago, didn’t you notice? And I thought I was the oblivious one.” Percy pulled her closer, and she leaned into his side. “Seriously, though. Are you alright?”

He felt her shake her head. “No, not really. Still scared as hell whenever I try to sleep. But it’s easier to wake up when I know you’re here and we aren’t camping out in some cave.” She sat up, smiling for once. “I don’t even really remember what I was dreaming about. Just that it wasn’t much fun, and I was on fire for most of it.”

Percy cringed. He’d been badly burned once in his life, when he accidentally blew the top off Mount Saint Helens, and he did not remember the sensation fondly. “Well then we won’t dwell on it. Unless you want to tell me about it.”

“No, let’s just sit. Maybe I can actually get some sleep.” 

They stayed in silence for a while, Percy watching the television while Annabeth dozed off, head in his lap. He ran a hand through her hair, trying to gently untangle the mess left over from her attempt at sleeping. Her curls felt brittle. Like they’d fall to pieces if he wasn’t careful. Despite having been brushed out the night before, it seemed like Annabeth had managed to tangle them back up. Percy grimaced, imagining all the tossing and turning she must have been doing. Exhaling, he laid his head back and stared up at the ceiling. Seeing Annabeth like this  _ hurt.  _ He could handle a lot more than he’d once thought. Tartarus left him with a lot of memories he didn’t want to deal with, but he’d lived with the prophecy of his own death hanging over his head for a year. After that, bad dreams just didn’t have the same effect. But watching his girlfriend writhe around under the covers, eyes wide open and sightless as she fought off something that wasn’t there, tore a hole in his chest. Pain inflicted on him, he could handle. The fact that all he could do when Annabeth was hurting was hold her and wait for her to snap out of her own head made him feel like a scared twelve-year-old again. 

Thankfully, Annabeth seemed to be sleeping decently for now. Abandoning his efforts at untangling her hair, Percy felt his attention lapse back to the racing.Her weight on his lap and slow breathing combined with the miasma of wailing engines to make his brain feel like it was melting, and he let it. Annabeth was here, with him, in the safest place on earth. He could afford to relax. 

As things turned out, his brain melted right back to sleep. Percy woke up to the smell of bacon wafting in from the kitchen. Annabeth was still on his lap, still snoring. He had no idea what time it was, but the racing on TV had ended and the commentators were talking about something he didn’t understand. He shut the screen off. 

“Percy?” His mom called from the kitchen. 

“Morning, mom!” He said back, keeping his voice low. 

She appeared in the doorway, wearing her old blue apron over a set of pajamas that he didn’t recognize. “I saw you and Annabeth sleeping and didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Thanks,” he said, voice rasping. “She said she didn’t sleep much last night, but now I think she is.”

“Good.” She motioned back to the kitchen. “Anyway, got to run before the bacon burns! There are pancakes too, once you’re ready.”

“We’ll be right in!” Percy could smell the pancakes now, real buttermilk-and-syrup Sally Jackson Specials that he’d missed since he’d remembered who he was. He slid a hand down Annabeth’s back, trying not to force her awake. She’d be hungry too, but he wanted her to wake up at her own pace, so he settled for stroking the bare small of her back until she rolled over and looked up at him, grey eyes just a little brighter than they had been the night before.

“Percy.” She said, yawning as she spoke. “Is that bacon?”

“You bet. Mom’s cooking breakfast.”

“Good, I’m starving. Feels like I might even be able to eat something.”

...

“So,” Percy’s mom asked between bites of bacon, “what do we want to do today?” She sat next to Paul, a syrup-covered stack of pancakes steaming on her plate. 

“You don’t have to go to work?” Percy asked.

“No. I’m home every day working on my manuscript, and Paul is off for the most part thanks to school being out.”

“I normally go to campus a few days a week and work with the summer students, but I took the next week off. Emailed the vice principal this morning. You and Annabeth being back is as good a reason as any to take a vacation.”

“We figured we’d head to Montauk on Sunday, have a week of empty beaches and nice weather, then celebrate your birthday that weekend before we head back.”

Percy blinked. “Wait, it’s my-“

“Your birthday, Kelp Head.” Annabeth laughed, elbowing him in the shoulder. “You didn’t remember? I hope you remembered the other thing that happens next week!”

He blushed, cheeks reddening more than usual thanks to his Underworld-induced pallor. “Of course I do! How could I forget being tossed in the canoe lake with my favorite girl?” She beamed at him.  _ Saved it!  _ “To be honest, I had no idea what day it was until you told me. Lost my watch a while back, and that was really the only way I had of looking.” 

His spirits perked at the mention of Montauk. Even after his Minotaur experience, the little cabin by the sea was a refuge. A place where he could forget that his life was under constant threat, sit in the sand with a Coke, and watch the waves. And now Annabeth would be there with him. Yeah, Montauk sounded pretty damn good.

Breakfast complete, the Jacksons and Annabeth left the apartment, headed for the building’s parking garage. Despite Percy’s protests that he was fine with the clothes he had, and that no, he wasn’t too tall for his shorts, his mom had insisted that they spend the day shopping. He gave in without much of a fight, though, because Annabeth really did need new shoes, and she’d never buy a pair for herself unless someone dragged her to the store. Looking down at his own as he walked, he decided that he’d pick up a set for himself. These old Converse had seen better days. The canvas uppers on both shoes were worn to bare thread, and he could feel the sole wearing thin under the ball of his left foot. He’d only had them for a year or so, having bought them last fall, but they’d already seen many times that amount of wear.

“And here we are!” Paul said, stopping next to a silver BMW. An M3, Percy realized, same as the one he liked driving in the  _ Gran Turismo  _ game he’d bought off a Hermes kid for a few dollars and a can of Red Bull. He looked around, trying to find the beat-up old Prius he’d learned to drive in. It was nowhere to be seen, though, and his mom was already walking towards the sedan’s passenger door. 

“Hold up, where’s your Prius?” He asked.

“The heater started having issues last winter, so I got rid of it. Decided I wanted something a little more fun, and a teacher friend of mine was selling his dad’s old car. So,” he said, hand on the hood, “here we are.” The sedan had only two doors, so Percy let Annabeth in before he slid behind the passenger seat. 

The outlet mall they headed for was out of the city by about an hour, which meant an extra 30 minutes of traffic-sitting and people-watching as they attempted to get out of Manhattan. The highway opened up eventually, though, and Paul headed inland, weaving between semi-trucks at just over the speed limit. The trip felt so close to what Percy would have been doing on a normal Friday in a normal August that he almost forgot about how ridiculously strange the past year had been. He and Annabeth had missed out on just about everything you were “supposed” to do when you were young and in love. Instead of long walks around the park or watching sunsets on the beach, they’d been forcibly separated, reunited under near-wartime circumstances, and tossed off the world’s highest cliff, to fight their way back to the lands of the living so they could risk returning to the place they’d just left. He realized then that, despite being just a week away from their anniversary, he hadn’t even taken her out for a day in the city since last summer. 

“Hey. You OK?” Annabeth had her hand on his arm, and she looked concerned. Percy shook his head. This lost-in-thought thing was getting old fast. 

“Sorry, just got stuck in my head for a bit.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling. What were you thinking about?”

“How little we’ve done, like, as a couple. We’ve been dating for almost a year and I haven’t even gotten you to a Yankees game.”

She smiled, taking his hand in hers. “Well, we haven’t exactly had much time to do anything like that. But we can now, which for me is all that matters.”

“I know, and that’s my own fault for disappearing. At least we’ve got some time before school starts. Might even make up for what I made us miss.”

Then she did something he didn’t see coming. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she slid over to the middle seat and buckled back in. 

“Hey, careful!”

“Percy. What happened last summer isn’t your fault, and I could never blame you for it. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.” Her eyes bored into him, owlish and shining. 

“I know, rationally, but that doesn’t mean I can accept it.“

“Then don’t try. Just come here.” The back seat was too cramped to really lay down, so Annabeth put an arm around his shoulder and let him sink into her side. He exhaled, feeling her warmth surround him. 

The next thing Percy knew, his head was on Annabeth’s lap, and the car was stopping. 

“We here?” He asked, looking up at his girlfriend. 

“Yup. Paul just pulled in.”

He sat up, kissing her as he went. “Good. My back is killing me; shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

“You need the rest,” his mom said from the passenger seat as she opened her door and stood up. Following her out into the parking lot, he ran a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his eyes. He really did need a haircut, he realized. He was used to salt and sweat in his hair, but it wasn’t normally this uneven or split at the ends. And it looked strangely steel-grey. He’d avoided the brittleness that Annabeth was dealing with, but her hair had kept its color. His was no longer the tarry black he’d grown used to seeing in the mirror. He didn’t mind the change, really, since the new color camouflaged his grey streak. Besides, Annabeth hadn’t said anything. Neither had his parents, now that he thought about it. Maybe they just assumed the color would come back once his hair grew out. He shrugged, following Annabeth as she followed Paul and his mom. He supposed that he would find out, one way or another. 

They split up in the outlet mall’s main plaza, his mom and Annabeth heading right while Percy and Paul headed left. “So,” his stepdad asked, “where to?”

“I need to replace these Converse. Left one’s almost worn through.”

“In that case, turn here. Place I used to go for shoes when I lived out here should still be around.”

“You lived here?”

“Yeah, went to school at Enstone, just up the road. This place used to be way smaller, but most of the old stores stuck around.”

“Enstone? Never heard of it.”

“It’s a smaller college, on the Connecticut side of the Sound. Good theater program, which is why I was there, but the engineering and architecture are pretty prominent as well. Might even interest Annabeth.”

“Oh, good to know. We were actually planning to look at school in New Rome, and honestly I don’t think I could get in anywhere else.”

“You’d technically be a legacy, which does rather help, but I see what you mean.” Paul leaned over, almost conspiratorially. “I also have an in with the director of admissions, but don’t tell anyone.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, we’re old friends, and he owes me a favor. Just something to keep in mind.”

Percy was about to ask just how Paul knew this guy, but they arrived in front of the shoe store. The timing couldn’t have been much better. His left Converse was about to give up its sole to Hades, and had been for the last few minutes. A salesman approached, and in ten minutes Percy’s old canvas was gone and replaced with a set of Sperrys. The boat shoes were an instant improvement. He could actually walk without one foot trying to dig a furrow in the pavement, and they felt solid despite the lack of full laces. 

The day continued in a whirlwind of storefronts and fitting rooms, which Percy found profoundly unnecessary. The shirt always had a size on the tag, and a medium always fit, so why bother checking? But Paul insisted, so he went along with it. He also insisted that Percy pick out at least a few things with buttons and collars, neither of which he’d worn since the last time he’d been to a school that required uniforms. Button-downs weren’t as bad as he remembered, and he doubted anyone would care if he rolled the sleeves up on these, so, as before, he went along. 

Percy was in the fitting room of an Old Navy, changing back into his ratty old cargo shorts, when he heard a metallic bump against the wall. The sound could have come from anything, but it perked his battle instincts up all the same. He listened closer, pressing an ear to the drywall. More bumping, and the unmistakable sound of swords clanging together.  _ What the fuck?  _ He left the fitting room, Riptide capped in his hand. A service door stood half-open on one side of the hallway, and Percy flattened himself against the wall beside it. Leaning over, he looked into what turned out to be a small warehouse. Shelving along the walls surrounded an oil-stained concrete floor. And in the center of it all stood an Earthborn, seven feet of muscle and chalky skin, breathing hard and staring straight past him.

This _Gegeines_ was a little guy, as far as its race went. Percy had killed Earthborn at least half again as large. The problem, he saw immediately, was that this one wasn’t carrying around a few rocks to chuck his way. That would have been too simple. This one had gotten smart, at some point. Had to have, if it was still around a week after most of its soily brethren had been disintegrated back into flower food. Each one of its six dinner-plate sized hands held a pilfered weapon. He counted three celestial bronze swords of varying length, a rusted morningstar studded with short iron spikes, and a pair of aluminum baseball bats that had probably come from the Big 5 next door. “Shit.” Of all the times to be separated from Annabeth, now was  _ really  _ not the one he would have picked. The giant spotted him as soon as he stepped into view, Riptide glowing in his hand. 

“I have sought you for a long time, Perseus Giant-Slayer.” The beast spoke in an earthquake rumble, shaking the shelves along the high walls.

“Gotta say, you could’ve been faster about it. I was having a nice day before you showed up.” He had to talk this one through, stall long enough to get into a better position. Right now, his only way out was back through the door and into a crowd of mortals that those baseball bats could most certainly harm. If he could get around the giant so that its path of attack was towards a solid wall, he could win this relatively easily. _Gegeines_ were not finesse combatants. Their best asset was the six arms they all lugged around, which could each exert the strength of an Olympic weightlifter. If he let this thing corner him, in other words, all was lost. It would have a six-to-one advantage in weapons, and the ability to use them all at once. If he could get it confused and attack from the side, though, the odds evened. He wished Annabeth were here. Feeling her next to him, knife in hand, was the most reassuring thing in the world. But that wasn’t the reality he currently inhabited. She was probably off with his mom, trying on blouses or browsing through a bookstore. The thought made him smile, even as he watched the Earthborn raise its swords. 

“You killed my mother, demigod. It is a shame you are alone, for otherwise I would kill yours in front of you.” 

Was that  _ pain  _ he heard in the thing’s voice? Could these brutes even feel that? He shook the thought off. He didn’t care what the giant was feeling.  _ His _ mother hadn’t tried to end the world as he knew it. Hadn’t sent an army of hell-demons to kill him and his girlfriend. Hadn’t forced them both into the literal back end of hell. This thing’s had done all of that and worse. He spat on the ground. The giant no longer faced the door. Instead, it stated Percy down as he circled in front of a stack of palletized boxes.  _ Now to provoke it. _

“Your mother can rot in Tartarus for all I care, and you can follow her!” 

“I will send _you_ to her myself!” The Earthborn screamed, rage and pain and anguish all pouring out, and then it charged. Percy sidestepped, new shoes finding purchase on the polished concrete floor, and came up on the monster’s flank. Three arms, holding a bat and a pair of swords, swung all at once. Riptide sliced the bat in half at the grip, and Percy danced in closer. The Earthborn roared in frustration, throwing the ruined bat aside as it charged again. But Percy was too close. He drove off his left foot, extending his leg like a pitcher delivering a fastball, and shoved his sword straight into the monster’s gut. He felt the tip break skin and sever muscle, deflecting off the beast’s rootlike spine as everything in its wake turned to golden dust. The Earthborn exploded, mud splattering the walls as its essence tried to sink back into the earth but came upon hard concrete instead of clay.

“Shit!” Percy was thrown back, and he felt a rib crack as he slammed sideways into one of the shelves. The wind knocked out of him, he collapsed against the stack of boxes Head buzzing, he put a hand under his shirt. There were no cuts in the skin, and the bone wasn’t moving independently of his other ribs, so he decided he’d just cracked it. A shot of nectar would handle this one, once he got home. He braced against the shelving unit and stood, walking a little unevenly towards the warehouse’s exterior door. He didn’t want to go back in the shop, not through the way he’d come, since the sight of a frazzled, mud-encrusted teenager might draw suspicions.

Paul almost jumped out of his skin when Percy walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. “Shit, Percy, where have you been?” He turned and saw Percy, hand on his ribs and covered in mud.

“Sorry. Earthborn decided he wanted a little more than a nice talk over some pizza.” 

“Looks more like you went dirt biking, but all right. Explains the crashing from the back.” Paul shook his head. “You all in one piece?” He sounded worried, like he couldn’t say what he wanted to. 

“I’m fine. Probably cracked a rib, but I can deal with that later.”

“What’s an Earthborn?”

“Gaea’s children. Six arms, made of clay. This one must not have gotten the memo that his mom’s back underground where she belongs.”

“That explains the dirt, then. Here, let’s find a restroom, you can change.” 

“Good...” Percy grabbed for his side, which spiked with pain as he set off after Paul. “Idea.”

Paul turned, mouth open to speak. Percy put a hand up. “Seriously. I’m fine. Had a lot worse and kept walking.” He could feel his adrenaline dropping off, and the pain in his side grew commensurately. He gritted his teeth. This one might actually be more serious than he thought. But he was  _ not  _ about to cut today short over a broken rib. His mom, Paul, and most particularly Annabeth, needed time to turn their brains off and enjoy themselves, and forcing them all back to their tiny apartment would not achieve that goal. His only job now was not to get in their way. 

The restroom they found was located beside a low-end jewelry store, but the stalls were clean enough. He hung his muddy t-shirt and shorts off the hook bolted to the dented steel door, and shrugged on one of the new shirts he’d bought. The red-and-grey plaid pattern made it more casual than anything else, but, as Paul had said, at least he’d found something with a collar. A pair of chinos went on after that, followed by the boat shoes he thanked the gods hadn’t been damaged in his altercation with the mud giant. Before doing up the buttons on his shirt, he checked his ribs again. A nasty bruise was forming, but the pain was dull and constant rather than sharp and flaring, so he put the injury out of his mind. It would keep until he got home. 

When he stepped outside, Annabeth and Sally stood waiting next to Paul. They both looked worried, his mother moreso than Annabeth. “Hey, how’s shopping?” Maybe they’d drop the whole thing if he acted nonchalant about it. 

Annabeth put paid to that notion as soon as he was close enough for her to grab him around the waist and pull him close.

“Ow! Watch the ribs, careful!”

“What the hell happened? I leave you alone for an hour and you-“

“I’m OK, Annabeth, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” He put an arm around her shoulders, kissing her forehead as she leaned into him.

“Good.” She exhaled, and looked up at him. “Paul said you’d been attacked and not much else; I was worried. What did you run into?”

“ _ Gegeines _ chased me into a back room and tried to skewer me. I gave him a sword for his trouble, and he threw me against a wall.”

He felt her hand reach under his shirt, searching for where he’d been hurt. Her touch was electric, widening his eyes and quickening his breathing.

“There?” She looked concerned, like she’d done something wrong. 

“No, not even close.” He smiled, trying to put on a brave face. “I’ll be fine, long as no one else takes a swing at me.”

“I might just do that if you keep running off and almost getting yourself killed,” his mom said from behind him. He turned.

“Mom. Seriously. This is nothing. I’ve had worse from falling down stairs.”

Her face softened a bit, and she glanced at Paul, who had his arm around her. “Alright, then, if you say so. But, still, let’s get you home.”

“But we weren’t done here, and you wanted to spend the day out,” he protested. “I’d rather not cut that short over something stupid like this.”

“Percy, we don’t have to-“

“I. Am. Fine.” He said, with more force than he’d meant. “Sorry. I just was looking forward to this, and I know you were too, and I’d rather finish up what we wanted to do.”

His mom relented. He saw it in her face and shoulders before she spoke, a release of stress that didn’t quite reach her eyes.  _ Close enough.  _ “Alright, but let’s at least get lunch. You look pale.”

“Yeah. That’d be good, I’m starved.” The big breakfast he’d eaten just a few hours ago might as well have been yesterday . This always happened after a fight, and he had never quite figured out why. No way had he tired himself out enough to burn through that much food _ ,  _ but he wasn’t about to refuse lunch. 

They ate at a Mexican restaurant near the outskirts of the mall, one that Paul said had been good in his college days. Percy hadn’t had enchiladas since well before he’d been shipped off to New Rome, and these were as good a reintroduction to cheese, beef, and corn tortillas as anything could be. Annabeth seemed to be eating her fill as well, even if that was something as insubstantial as tacos and a salad. How she’d managed to fight her way out of Tartarus and right back to Camp on nothing more than the bread and water that had been her stomach’s limit of tolerance, he would probably never know. He’d have keeled over from starvation. 

The rest of the day was spent in one store after another, trying on more clothes than Percy would ever even consider owning at once. He knew the whole ordeal was necessary, given the growth spurt he’d just now begun to appreciate, but he regretted insisting that they finish their day out at least twice. At least Annabeth seemed to be enjoying herself. She had always insisted that she hated shopping and didn’t see the point of the whole exercise when she could wear the same old jeans and shirts she always had. And yet here she was, rushing in and out of fitting rooms and dragging some very un-Annabeth-like clothing in with her. He even thought he saw a skirt once, but she moved too fast for him to decide whether or not his eyes were messing with him.

_... _

“Percy, just let me see. It won’t kill you to take your shirt off.” They sat in his room, halfway through putting away the clothing they’d just brought home. Annabeth had indeed found a skirt, a green-and-blue pleated number that matched one of the shirts he’d picked out. 

“Fine. But like I said, it really is nothing.” He searched below his collar, pulling at the top button. He’d barely gotten it undone when Annabeth reached out and undid the rest, hands warm against his chest. He let his own hands rest on her waist, and watched as she worked. 

“There,” she said, and he shrugged the unbuttoned garment to the floor. Her eyes flashed, and she dropped to one knee in front of him. “Percy, this is serious.”

His gaze followed her down, and he craned his neck to see the black-and blue mess on his left side. His whole ribcage was covered in a single large bruise, tinged with red and yellow. Maybe he had gotten knocked around worse than he thought. He flinched as Annabeth poked around the edges, softly but still with enough force to shoot pain up his side. “Yeesh, careful! It doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks unless you poke at it!”

“Yeah, that’s because the last three ribs are broken. Dammit, Percy, what were you thinking not wanting to come home? You said you were fine!”

“That’s because I am fine. Okay, it’s worse than I thought, but it won’t kill me.”

“You don’t know that.” She looked up at him, eyes wide and tearing up. “Either way, why do it to yourself? It’s fine to admit you’re hurt.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, grimacing as he bent his torso. “Because if I do that, we cut the day short, my parents are worried, you’re doing the same thing you’re doing now, and I feel like shit for ruining a good day.” He sounded mad. Why was he mad?

“And look where we are now!” She not-quite shouted at him, standing up and starting to pace the room. “Your parents are scared, I’m worried sick, and-“ 

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Percy cut her off, grabbing her hand as he spoke. “I know I did.” He pulled her over to the bed, and she sat down, practically letting herself fall to the mattress. 

Annabeth didn’t speak for a long moment. Just sat, eyes downcast with her hands in her lap. Then, finally, she smiled, just the corners of her mouth. “Yeah. I never thought I’d ever actually like going shopping, of all things, but it made me do something besides obsess over the past month. I didn’t have to think about one of us almost dying once every ten minutes.” She threw an arm around him. “Well, mostly.”

“Then that’s all that matters.“ He turned to face her, sitting with one leg up on the bed. “Besides,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, “if we leave early, you don’t end up with that skirt, and I’ve never seen you in one.” One of his hands found her leg, resting on her knee.

Annabeth blushed, her face and neck turning the color of ripe tomatoes. “Have you really not? You know, I guess you’re right. I only ever had jeans at Camp. I’ll have to bring it to Montauk when we go.”

“Mm, I’d like that a lot.” His hand moved up her leg, slowly but surely, and she turned an even deeper shade of red. “You really are a tease, wearing these damn long pants all the time.”

“Percy...” Her eyes shifted away from his, towards the door.

“It’s just us, Annabeth. But if you’d rather not-“

She shut him up with a kiss, moving faster than his brain could register. He felt himself falling until his back hit the bed, and somehow his side wasn’t hurting anymore even though Annabeth was on top of him, snaking her hands under

him and grabbing his shoulder-blades. His found her hips, and pulled her down until she rested her whole weight on him. They rolled to the side, and Annabeth broke away for a shuddering gasp of air, hair a mess of golden fire in the evening light. “Gods, Annabeth, I love you,” he said, trying and failing to catch his breath. 

“I love you too,” she gasped out, chest heaving. “Dammit, I just wish we had more time.”

“Annabeth, we’ve got as long as we want. You know I’m never going anywhere.“

“I meant until your parents get back, Seaweed Brain.” 

“They left like five minutes ago, we’ve got at least an hour.“

Another kiss. “Percy.” She was breathing fast, almost panting, and he felt sweat on his lips. “I don’t want an hour, I want as long as we want. Do you get what I’m saying?” Her gaze found his, and, for the first time in almost a year, he saw lightning amidst the roiling grey. 

Percy had to nod. What else could he do? Like always, she was right. He wanted her desperately, in the same way his entire being had cried out for the sea when they’d driven across Nevada in the back of a zoo trailer. The first time he’d really, truly been close to her. And covered in zebra musk.  _ How romantic.  _ But he knew that if they tried anything further, they’d both end up listening for the sound of keys in the lock. He sighed. “You realize I don’t call you Wise Girl for nothing, right?”

“I do have the occasional stroke of genius,” she said, rolling to the other side of the bed. 

“Wait, we can still lay here!” He reaches after her, pain flashing back through his ribs.

“We could, but then there wouldn’t be time to get cleaned up before dinner.”

“Dinner’s not for a couple hours, at least. We’ve got a little time.”

“Enough time for a shower and to put all these clothes away?”

“I can’t see why not, if we both take short ones.”

Annabeth turned to face him, a mirthful grin lighting her face up. “I have a better idea. Here, get the water going, I’ll grab us a change of clothes.” 

Percy’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling. Now  _ he _ was blushing, if the heat in his forehead was any tell. “But you just said you wanted to wait!”

“I do, but I think I’m entitled to shower with my boyfriend in the meantime. Now go on, I don’t want to wait for the water to get hot!” With that, Annabeth stripped off her t-shirt and threw it at him. He caught it, and stared. He knew his mouth was gaping open, and that there wasn’t much he could do about it. She was absolutely  _ beautiful.  _ Her ribs were too prominent below the simple white sports bra she wore, and he spotted the scar from the knife she took for him on the Williamsburg Bridge, and even now she shrank into herself just a little when she realized he was staring at her, but all he felt was the sudden urge to leap over the bed and kiss every inch of her and-

“Go, dummy! I’ll be right behind you!”

And so he went, grinning like an idiot the whole time. 

  
  



	3. Under the Plaintive Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The inevitable Montauk chapter. First Annabeth POV, next one will be from her perspective as well. Title is an Insomnium song off Since the Day it All Came Down. Peak sadboi metal, and a good intro to the band and their sound should that sort of thing be of interest.

Annabeth 1

Annabeth’s eyes shot open. She looked up and around, and her heart dropped into her stomach. She lay on a cavern floor covered in red dust. The dirt coated her forearms and chest, and she knew it was probably in her hair and smeared all over her face as well. “Percy?” She called, eyes darting around the cave. No response. _Where was he?_ The question pounded in her chest, and she felt her breath shortening. _No panicking._ She could handle this. She’d handled it before. Up she stood, dagger in one hand. 

The cave entrance was a narrow crevasse in one of the many canyon walls that seemingly appeared from nowhere down here. Annabeth poked her head out, scanning for danger. Looking for Percy, wherever in Hades he’d gone. Then she saw something. Footprints, uneven and ill-defined, wavered away from the cave. Percy’s. Without a doubt. Who else could have made them? _Where was he going?_

She followed her boyfriend’s trail for a minute or so before she came around a corner in the rock face and saw him, standing maybe twenty yards away, at the edge of another spontaneous canyon. He faced away from her, his arms slack at his sides. He was swaying on his feet, barely staying up, and he stepped dangerously close to the edge to steady himself as she ran towards him.

“Percy, no!”

His head snapped around, and he spoke. He sounded more dead than alive, but even from ten yards away she heard everything he said as if he was shouting in her ear. “I’m sorry, Annabeth. I love you.”

“Wait, Percy-“

And then he fell. 

“No!” Annabeth skidded to a halt, almost going over the edge herself. She looked over the precipice, just in time to see Percy’s body impale itself on one of the thousand rocky spikes that jutted from the ground a hundred feet below. His chest burst open, ribs shattered by the stone needle that scattered his life’s blood across the floor of Hell, and she fell to her knees, screaming until her throat was numb and bloody. She pitched forward, legs suddenly powerless to hold her weight, and saw the spikes rushing up to meet her.

Then she woke up. She lay on the floor. In the bedroom she and Percy shared. At his parents’ cabin. In Montauk, New York, United States of America. Her mind filled in details, but she refused to trust any of them until she stood up and made sure that Percy was-

Gone. The covers on his side of the bed had been tossed aside, and the bedroom door was cracked open. She shoved her hands into the bedding, searching for him, or anything that might tell her why he’d left and where he’d gone. He had to be somewhere. If not in here, then maybe the kitchen? Annabeth tore from the room, bare feet slipping on the varnished floor. The kitchen was dark and cold. She flicked the light on, an icy mass rising in her chest as she checked the adjoining living room, finding nothing but the book she’d left on the coffee table. She was panicking now, and the rational part of her knew it. He _had_ to be somewhere. What she’d seen in her dream was as false as anything could be. Maybe he’d gone outside, tried to get some air? Taken a walk in the dunes? She burst through the front door, searching the sand for prints like she’d just done in the cave, except this time there were none. Just windblown sand and shells that cut her feet as she stumbled around, seeking something to point the way to the one person, the only _fucking_ person she thought would stay with her. It took her a moment to realize that she was screaming his name, calling out for him as she ran for high ground, the better to search from above. The top of the dune she climbed so should have given her a decent view of the shoreline, but the moon was behind the clouds and even her night vision couldn’t pierce through more than twenty yards of near-total darkness. Annabeth scanned what little she could see, hoping against fear that he’d just gone out for a walk, or had a bad dream, or a hundred other perfectly normal, logical things that he might have done. He wasn’t there. Didn’t answer when she shouted his name. He was gone. 

Fear won. It wasn’t supposed to do that, not for her. She was a child of reason, literally born from her mother’s mind, and now she couldn’t even tamp down the bullshit that basic logic was supposed to buffer against? What the _fuck_ was wrong with her? She sat down in the sand, head in her hands, and wept. She didn’t know why. Didn’t even care, now that she thought about it. The tears came whether she liked it or not. They spilled out into her palms, soaking her forearms and shirt. Shoulder-wrenching sobs forced her off-balance, and she finally gave up on sitting and slumped over on her side. A gust of wind off the ocean blasted the dunes, and she felt grains of sand work their way under her shirt and shorts. She reached down, trying to swipe them away before they got any further, but the movement just invited more in, and she gave up on that too. _Might as well just give up on everything,_ she thought. The idea alone frightened her, but far worse was the realization that she was even letting herself think this way. Even in Tartarus, in the literal river of sorrow, she hadn’t let herself consider giving up. And now here she lay. Helpless. Hopeless. Alone.

“Annabeth?” 

Percy’s voice jerked her back to lucidity by both ears. She struggled to get both feet back under her, to stand up or at least to sit up, to look like less of a useless wreck in front of him, and then she was falling down towards the waves, and-

Strong arms wrapped around her. Her downward motion stopped, and she felt herself being pressed into the sand as Percy’s momentum carried them both sideways across the sandy slope. They stopped, but he kept holding on, gathering her closer as if she were so much loose rope. She opened both eyes, blinking hard against the moon that now glowed in an open sky. Neither of them spoke. She couldn’t. What was she supposed to say? _Sorry for waking up everyone within half a mile because I was shrieking like a harpy? Really didn’t mean to, but I hallucinate about everyone I love dying every time I go to sleep?_ So she cried, until her eyes ran dry and all she could do was shiver in Percy’s arms. He didn’t say anything. Just held her even closer, if such a thing were possible, and threaded one hand through her hair while the other rested on the small of her back. 

After gods only knew how long, Percy shifted under her. Annabeth felt him sit up, still cradling her against him. “Annabeth, what happened?” He asked. She physically felt the fright in his voice, the concern. 

“I-“ The memory of the catalyst for everything that had just taken place shot a fresh wave of ice through her, but this time her rational mind asserted itself, driving a wedge of calm into the fright and splitting it like a log under an axe. Percy was here. He was breathing. She was with him, safe in his arms. That which she had feared, the prospect which had overwhelmed the iron wall of reason she kept around the dark place her brain took her on nights like this, vanished. 

“I saw you die, in a dream.” There was no sense in dancing around the point. She’d have to tell him, and probably his parents, what had happened; might as well start now. Doubtless she’d woken them up with her mad dash out the door. “You killed yourself. Right in front of me.” 

His arms tightened around her. “Tell me about it?” He sounded calm, but she felt him tense up as he shifted her to face him. 

“I woke up in a cave, in Tartarus, and you weren’t there. Went looking around and followed your footprints to a cliff. You told me you loved me and apologized, and then you-“ she inhaled, trying to keep back tears and failing. “You fell. I tried to grab you, but you went over too fast.” She cried out as she said it, and she felt Percy’s hand pull her into his shoulder. She could smell him, all salt and that raw, sensual, spine-curling scent she could only describe as _Percy._ It was all she could do to hold on, to let his being wash over her. 

“Oh, Annabeth.” His hand skimmed her back, tracing the arc of her spine. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just letting his fingers play over her back. “I need you to know that I would never even consider doing something like that. I have way, way too much to live for.” He smiled. “Besides, if I did, I know you’d be along in about fifty years to find me and kick my ass over it.”

“You know I would.” She rested her head on his shoulder, wrapping her legs around his torso. “It’s just that I woke up and you weren’t there and I guess l panicked.”

He spasmed under her, muscles in his core tightening up. “I came out here for a walk. I should have woken you up, but you were sleeping and I figured you needed the rest.”

“Oh. Did you have a bad dream too?”

“Yeah. I can never really sleep after, so I figured a walk in the surf would tire me out more than tossing and turning and disturbing you.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did. Gods know I wake you up enough.”

“I know. Might just have to, next time. It’s easier when I’m not alone.”

“I’m just glad you found me.” The fact that she’d been completely helpless when he arrived didn’t bear mentioning. 

“I heard you calling out, but I was down the beach a ways and it took me a minute to get back. I thought you were hurt when I saw you.”

Annabeth bit the inside of her cheek. She had been, if not physically, and she owed him an explanation. For making him worry, if nothing else. “I got to the top of that dune and couldn’t see far enough to know where I was. I guess I just... I don’t know. I gave up.” She sighed. It all felt so stupid, now that she was back in her right mind. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should be stronger than this, but here we are.”

“You’re plenty strong, Annabeth. You’re still here, aren’t you? We’re still here.”

“Yeah, but I’m not supposed to panic like this. Not over some stupid dream! Gods, my mother would probably disown me if she-“

Percy kissed her. Hard, on the lips. She felt the tightness slip from her arms and shoulders. He pulled away, breathing hard.

“Annabeth. Look at me.” His brow was furrowed, and one side of his mouth curled down the way it always seemed to when he was worried about her. She’d seen that look too much in Tartarus, and afterward. ”We literally walked out of hell two weeks ago. We are sitting here, today, because you were strong enough to keep us both alive down there. If there is anyone in the world who’s not supposed to be OK right now, it’s you.” He swallowed. “But you are, somehow. More than you know.“

“Then why don’t I feel like it? I can’t think straight. I’m panicky and I can’t focus, not like I used to. I’m not supposed to be this weak!” She was crying again, could feel tears wicking up over her eyelids. Percy brushed them away. 

“Strictly speaking, Wise Girl, we’re both supposed to be dead. I think we both get a pass on being a little weak, no?” 

She had to nod at that. “I guess.” 

“Then let’s go do that together, preferably somewhere warmer and less sandy. You’re freezing.” And she was. She hadn’t noticed until now how cold the wind had grown, and her foot hurt for some reason she knew but couldn’t remember. 

Sally and Paul met them halfway back to the cabin. They’d gone out searching after Annabeth’s sudden exit woke them both, and had been about to start checking the beach when she and Percy crested a dune and called out to them. After Annabeth gave a hurried explanation of what had happened, they all headed back inside. Sally insisted on cleaning the cut on her foot, which she only now remembered getting, but it had bled badly enough that she saw blood in the sand when they got back to the cabin. A shower and a mug of hot chocolate later, she hugged Sally goodnight and found her way back to the spare bedroom. Percy was already in bed.

“Hey,” he said, waving in the half-light.

“You didn’t shower.”

“No real need to. We’ll go swim tomorrow if you want, and then it won’t matter much anyway.”

“But you’re covered in sand, it’ll get in the sheets.”

“No, I changed clothes! It’ll be fine.”

“Gods, your head is full of kelp.”

“I do try.” 

Annabeth climbed in next to him, grabbing as many blankets as she could. She rolled over to face him, eyes wide in the dark.

“I don’t want to sleep. I don’t know what’ll happen if I do, but I’d rather be miserable tomorrow than have another dream like that.”

Percy pulled her close, until his chin rested on her forehead. “If you do, I’ll be right here. Promise.”

“Good. Sorry to make you and your folks panic.” The embarrassment she felt over breaking down was new and unwelcome. She hadn’t done something like this in her life. Not when Percy had gone missing, the first or the second time, and definitely not in Tartarus. She guessed that her mind, deprived of external stress, was working overtime to create some. That was the peril of thriving on adversity. When there was none, she had to make it herself. And she was quickly learning that she’d rather not deal with the sort of hardship that her brain dreamt up.

“You don’t have to apologize, Annabeth. Ever. Not to me, or my mom, or Paul.”

“I know. But you deserve one anyway. You’re supposed to be on vacation, not chasing after me because I’m too stupid to stay calm after some nightmare.”

“You’re here, too. You’re family, and don’t ever forget that.”

She’d been about to reply to what she thought he would say, and his actual statement froze her. 

“Annabeth?” 

“You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever actually said that to me before.” Pathetic as she knew she sounded, Annabeth honestly couldn’t remember anyone ever telling her, to her face, that they considered her a part of their family. Not her father, who’d been too busy with his new wife and sons to pay much attention to the daughter he’d never really wanted, or her half-siblings at Camp, who were all just as standoffish and uncomfortable with emotion as her, and certainly not Athena herself. But none of them mattered now. She let herself stop thinking, just for a minute, and feel Percy’s warmth surrounding her. 

“Never?” He sounded more than a little horrified at the notion.

“No. Us Athena kids were never much for talking about feelings, and my dad had so much on his plate with my stepmom and their kids that I think he just kind of gave up on understanding me.”

“Oh.” She felt him sigh, a long release of breath after a sudden, abrupt intake. “Oh, gods. I’m-“

“Don’t apologize, Percy. Please.”

“But I am, I’m sorry. You don’t deserve any of that.”

“None of it is your fault. You, and your mom, and Paul, you’ve all been so good to me. To the point that I really don’t deserve it.”

“Annabeth, you know that isn’t true.”

“Can we not argue? I know what you’re going to say, and I love you for it, but for right now I’m too tired to talk about it. Just... just hold me? Please?”

His arms tightened around her, and she grabbed for his shirt, trying to bring herself as close to him as she could. 

“Thanks.” She said, finally letting herself relax. 

“For you? Anything. I love you.” She heard the grin in his voice, could see his face lit up even though she was facing away form him.

“I love you, too.” She felt a little lighter, a little less overrun. Sleep came easily, and she let it take her. 

_____________

“Well, fuck.” Annabeth stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, and wondered how she’d made it through the last year. She looked skeletal, even by her standards. Any semblance of outward strength was gone, replaced with a bony lankiness she thought had been left behind once she turned twelve. She looked like a grown-up version of her childhood self, too thin and too sharp around the edges. _Oh, well._ What did she expect? Eight months of questing across and below most of the Western World was bound to have consequences. 

At least the bathing suit Sally had insisted on buying her fit. Hunter-green was a good color for her, and Percy’s mother had an eye for clothes, which had made the previous day’s shopping trip that much more enjoyable. Annabeth’s stepmother would never have taken her out to rebuild the wardrobe she’d never really had. Might have given her a hundred dollars and a few hours at the mall, if that. Her decision to stay here in New York felt more vindicated by the day. She hadn’t really wanted to go back to California, even before Sally offered her a place in the little apartment, and leaving Percy for any length of time was out of the question. But she actually felt at home here. Percy’s presence had to be part of the reason why, but not having to worry over whether she’d be dealing with normal Frederick Chase or under-his-wife’s-thumb Frederick Chase helped a lot. Besides, she wasn’t sure a more caring person than Sally Jackson existed. 

All these good feelings were beside the point, of course. Annabeth knew she looked like shit. Aside from the weight loss and the constant sleeplessness, she couldn’t even go outside in anything less than a turtleneck without announcing to the world that _hey, I almost got my boyfriend and I killed in Tartarus._ Her drakon-claw scar stood out against skin that, eternal suntan or not, was still a little too pale for her taste. The injury itself was healed, at least in medical terms. Hot nectar poured into the wound had ensured of that, as had Percy’s valiant effort at cleaning it out before he dressed it with the last of her emergency gauze supply. But the cosmetic damage would never fully repair itself, though it would improve with time. Drakon claws rivaled a good scalpel when it came to sharpness, and clean cuts weren’t as likely to leave lasting damage. In a few years, she knew, this scar would blend into the faded patchwork she’d accumulated over a short lifetime of combat. But that wasn’t _now._ At this moment, she looked more like an extra in a slasher movie than she was comfortable with admitting. She sighed, throwing her hands up and letting them drop. Maybe a collared shirt would cover the whole scar, but she hadn’t brought one. Didn’t even own one, now that she thought about it. She spun on her heel, left the bathroom, and almost slammed into Sally. 

“Oh, sorry!” The older woman said, jumping aside. 

“No, no. That’s my fault.” She turned to find Percy, wondering if he was still in the bedroom.

“Annabeth?” A hand on her shoulder made her turn. Sally stood in the bathroom doorway, concern plain on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just didn’t see you coming when I opened the door.”

Doubt mixed with concern, a raised brow replacing a furrowed one. “You were in there for at least ten minutes. Are you feeling alright?”

_Not really,_ her brain said. She opened her mouth, meaning to lie, to try and keep Sally from worrying too much. She couldn’t speak. The words caught in her throat, and she felt the scar flash with pain as she half-choked out something about needing to go grab a shirt, because she’d forgotten one. 

Sally didn’t let up. Percy wouldn’t have, either, so perhaps Annabeth shouldn’t have expected anything else. “Hey. You’re allowed to talk to me, you know that, right?”

Annabeth turned, halfway to her and Percy’s room. This was the last conversation she wanted to be having. She _wanted_ to throw a shirt on, cover what shame she could, and go be a little less miserable than she felt right now. She very nearly spun on her heel and slammed the door in Sally’s face. Thank the gods that the Athena part of her mind interfered. _You’re not going to avoid this forever._ The voice was Sally’s, though the woman in front of her said nothing. She froze. Let her arm go limp, her hand dropping away from the doorknob. 

“No. Things aren’t all right.” She sounded more timid than she felt, for having kicked herself into doing something useful. 

Sally’s expression softened. The hand on Annabeth’s shoulder pulled her close. “Here, let’s sit and talk about it.”

They ended up on the overstuffed corduroy couch, mugs of coffee steaming in their hands. Sally had insisted that Paul and Percy could wait just a little longer, and Annabeth had reluctantly agreed. “So,” Sally said, tone light. “What’s going on?”

There was no sense in dancing around the point. Annabeth’s rational mind was back in command now, and she felt grounded. Level, like she was used to. The shame and disgust from before were still there, but in the distance. She could look at them and see the flaws in their facades, the ones that didn’t make themselves apparent when she had to stare down her feelings up close. “It isn’t much, really. I had a bad moment when I realized I can’t cover this damn scar up. I know I shouldn’t care, but...” She trailed off, her burst of courage exhausted. 

“But you do.” 

“Yeah. I don’t know how I’m supposed to walk around with Percy when I look like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”

”You know, I don’t think he’d care even if you were Frankenstein’s monster. Which you most certainly are not.” Sally laughed, a mellow, wonderful sound that Annabeth suddenly realized she’d have given anything to grow up hearing. “Annabeth, you two are young and beautiful and in love. No scar is ever going to change that.”

Annabeth had to smile. Percy had said the same thing, and of course she hadn’t believed him, because wasn’t it his job to try to cheer her up even if he had to lie a little? The idea that he’d been telling the truth hadn’t occurred to her until now. She sighed. “It’s still _there,_ though. I can feel people staring whenever I’m outside, and I hate it.”

Sally put an arm around her, and pulled her close. They sat like that for a little while, and Annabeth let herself relax. She felt at ease, a sensation she wasn’t used to outside of Percy’s immediate presence. “Here. I think I might have something that’ll help.” Sally stood, leaving Annabeth on the couch. She came back a moment later, a faded green-and-white button-down draped over her arm. “This should cover things up. Not that you need to, but you shouldn’t have to feel exposed if you’d rather not.” She handed the shirt over. Annabeth pulled it on, doing up all the buttons but the top. She felt the soft, well-worn fabric brush against her neck, around where the cut began. Sally adjusted the collar. “There. Now no one will be the wiser unless you want them to be.”

Annabeth let out a breath, feeling a little more secure. “Thanks, Sally. I’ll give it back after we’re done outside.”

“It’s yours. I have others, and besides, those colors work so well on you.”

Blushing, Annabeth smiled. “Well, if you say so. Thanks.”They sat in silence for a while, finishing their coffee.

By the time Sally and Annabeth left the cabin, Percy and Paul had finished setting up the umbrellas and lounge chairs. The two women sat down, and Annabeth was immediately glad for some shade. Her flannel did well at covering things, but it also made her sweat as soon as she stepped into the sun. The chairs sat in the sand halfway between the dunes and where the surf began, though, so the sea breeze kept things cool. Percy stood down where the dry sand ended, baseball glove on his left hand. He and Paul were playing catch, the older man standing thirty yards away and throwing like he knew what he was doing. The ball zipped past, smacking Percy’s glove like a rifle bullet. Percy was clearly trying to keep up, but his throws were more arced, with a little less velocity behind them. 

Annabeth turned in her chair, and watched Sally watch her husband and son. “Did Paul play baseball?”

“He was a third baseman in college.”

“Third baseman throws to first to get runners out. You need a good arm,” Annabeth said. She watched another laser-straight throw nearly decapitate her boyfriend, who grinned and powered one right back. “He should have gone pro.” Yankees baseball had been one of the few things she’d been able to get to play on the old analog TV in the Athena cabin as a kid, and she’d grown into a pretty big fan. Paul was burning throws in, pinpoint-accurate every time. Fifteen years ago, he would have been even faster. 

“I asked him why he didn’t, once. He said he couldn’t hit well enough, and classes kept him too busy to really practice. And he went straight into the Army after school, so there wasn’t time anyway.”

Annabeth blinked. _Paul? In the Army?_ She couldn’t imagine the bearded, bespectacled man ever wearing a uniform, much less carrying a gun. “I had no idea he was a soldier.”

“I didn’t either, until he told me. Really surprised me, but he was. Five years, as an officer.” She watched as Paul leaped for a high throw. He caught the ball, landed hard on both feet, and whipped it sidearm back to Percy, who stretched to the side and grabbed it in the web of his glove. Annabeth bit her lip. _Gods, was he a sight._ Even down twenty pounds and with a scar longer than hers running up his left side, his every movement exuded confidence. The lunge to the side to reach the ball, the easy recovery, the gloved hand pointing up to signal the lazy pop-fly he lobbed towards Paul. The rolling shoulders, and the full-bore grin he shot her way when he turned and saw her staring. She waved, and he raised an arm, before whirling back to catch the throw that would have plunked him in the side had he been slower. If he wasn’t stunning, then she had no idea what the word meant.

__________

“Is that my mom’s shirt?” Percy asked as they walked down the the strand. The wind was up, and it blew his hair back and out of his face. Annabeth watched it settle, and couldn’t help but look him in the face. He had always had sharp features, but the last year had filled them out. His chin and jaw had squared up, his nose and brow chiseled into an aquiline solidity that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a full-blooded Roman.

“Yeah, she let me have it.”

“Why? You’ll burn up in this heat.” 

She brought his hand to her collarbone. “Percy, I look like I just walked out of a Saw movie. I’d rather be hot than have half the beach staring at my chest.”

“Oh.” He squeezed her hand, then let go so he could put an arm around her. “Well, they can all go to hell.” She could hear the nerves in his voice, the frayed synapses that lent an edge to what should have been easy conversation. “Any one of them says something, I’ll break their jaw. I’d rather you be comfortable, and you’re sweating already.”

Annabeth sighed. “Percy, right now this _is_ comfortable. I’ll be okay.” 

He didn’t reply. Just left his arm where it was, hand on her shoulder as he kept her close. She leaned into his side, trying to let him know she wasn’t upset. Not with him. They walked in silence for a while, letting the surf wash around their ankles. Annabeth’s right still twinged every time she put weight on it. That was her own fault. She’d set it wrong, splinted it badly, and run it ragged when it needed rest and time to heal. 

“Hey. What’s wrong?” Percy squeezed her shoulder, dropping her out of her head. 

“Ankle’s hurting again. I really should have used something besides bubble wrap for a splint; maybe I’d actually be able to run on it.” She laughed, that sardonic bark she couldn’t help. 

“In fairness, you weren’t exactly dragging the Apollo Cabin around with you.”

“No,” she said. “Shame Nico took so long to get with Will Solace; he probably could have handled it.”

Percy’s grin came back at the mention of Nico. The son of Hades had decided to stick around Camp for the year, for once not disappearing into his father’s realm. “I have no idea how that happened, but if they’re happy then I’m happy.”

“Even though he had a massive crush on you?”

“It wasn’t massive!” Percy turned a brownish red, blushing as much as someone with his complexion could. “It was... normal. I don’t know!”

“Did you ask?” 

“Of course I did. He said I stopped being his type after he realized how much he liked blondes.”

“You two aren’t that much different then, are you?”

“Maybe we’ve both just got good taste in hair.” He ran a hand through hers, proving his point. “Here, let’s go swim,” he said, turning towards the water. When she hesitated, he stopped in his tracks. Looked at her, that downcast concerned expression she loved and hated at the same time plain on his face. “You know I don’t care about that scar, right? I mean- I know you care, I’m just saying that I think you’re beautiful no matter what, and-“

Annabeth could have died right then and been happy. She knew she could’ve lost a leg and Percy would have been right there, saying the same thing and meaning every bit of it. And so she shrugged her shirt off, letting it fall to the sand, and pulled him into the water. The salt air stung when hit hit bare skin, and the surf was freezing, and precisely none of it bothered her. She was right where she belonged. 

___________

They celebrated Percy’s birthday the next evening. Paul dug out a spare propane tank for the grill, and cooked up some burgers while Sally and Annabeth fried up enough potatoes to feed the entire Athena cabin. They ate on the porch as the sun set, and, once the burgers were gone, they headed for the beach. There, they set a fire on the sand and sat around it, eating cake that Sally had baked the night before. She’d been generous with the blue icing, as always, but the sponge was pure chocolate. Annabeth ate as much as she could stomach. The sky was on fire behind them, and darkness swept in over the water as the eastern horizon went from blue to bruised purple to black. Percy sat next to her, arm around her waist, and she let her head rest on his shoulder. For once, they had the luxury of sitting in peace. The sand was cool and smooth and welcoming, not the sharp, glassy conglomerate that Tartarus seemed to be paved with. The vault of heaven, painted around the edges with pastel orange and purple, was dotted with the stars whose absence had made the Underworld’s night sky so unsettling. She could relax now. Not fully, and perhaps not for long. Now, though, she forced her mind off the high-alert it’d been on since Percy vanished. She was home, and home was safe. Nothing else mattered. 


	4. Dead Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Took forever to get this done, thanks to other projects. Oops.

Annabeth 2

“And over here, we have the athletics building.” The tour guide, a skinny, brunette daughter of Ceres, pointed over her shoulder as she led Annabeth down the University of New Rome’s main street. How the girl managed to walk backwards without banging into a lamp-post or falling off the curb was a mystery. Lots of practice, Annabeth guessed. She felt like a zebra in a pasture full of horses. People stopped and stared when she passed. The reason why was obvious. She looked nothing like a Roman. Every student she saw had service tattoos branded on their arms, and her hair was a good six inches longer than anyone else’s. The whole place felt like a military school, as if someone had taken the academy Nico di Angelo once attended, improved the architecture, and plunked it down in California. She didn’t much like it. Everything was so stifling and regimented compared to Camp, which she supposed made sense. Romans were militaristic and strict by nature, and while she knew those stereotypes seldom held true when it came to individuals, the atmosphere on New Rome’s campus bore them out. Looking around, Annabeth saw students walking past on their way to class, sitting in an open-air amphitheater for a lecture, and drilling at swords and shields on the quad. With a few exceptions, no one at in the shade reading, or stood around by the doors, or seemed to be enjoying themselves that much at all. Well, she reflected, school was supposed to be hard work, and most everyone here was a veteran of ten years in the Legions. How else were they going to act?

This tour had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Annabeth wasn’t sure where Sally and Paul found the time or money to fly across the country on less than a week’s notice and get a hotel room for a long weekend, but they’d insisted that she and Percy at least check out the University of New Rome before they decided on attending. Up until they got pulled in two separate directions for two separate tours, she’d been certain that the day would be a formality. Easy admission to a school boasting guaranteed safety from monster attack? How could any demigod with a functioning brain say no? But then the admissions woman they met told them that former praetors were entered-by-default into their own special honors college, complete with their own dormitories and dining rooms. This meant, of course, that Percy got his own tour while she was told to wait for a guide to take her around. She didn’t mind the separation, but the way the lady had brushed her off when she asked if she could join the tour group full of Romans that had already lined up outside the building had been more than a little rude. “No,” she’d said, “we only just started letting Greeks apply for admission, and until we’re more… used to the situation, we’re only having them on dedicated tours.” The woman had said the word “Greeks” like it tasted bad, causing Percy’s hand to tighten on the arm of the chair he sat in. He had dealt with more than his share of judgment from Romans, particularly Octavian and his followers, but Annabeth had never seen him take visible issue with it before.

The tour wound through a warren of dormitory buildings, all of which looked to have been built in the 1960s. Thin, brutalist windows set into vertical slits in the brick walls reflected the morning sun. Annabeth followed the guide, whose name she’d already forgotten, through one of the buildings’ main doors, and up the narrow staircase. She stepped into a dorm room, which felt about ten degrees warmer than the hallway. The room was so small that, had there been anyone else on the tour, maybe three of them could have fit inside before it got cramped. The furnishings were as minimal as one could expect from a dormitory. Two beds, two desks, two sets of cabinets. Annabeth glanced around, looking for any evidence of an air-conditioning unit, and saw none. Frowning, she spoke to the guide for the first time.

“Excuse me, is there any A/C in the building?”

The guide spun like she’d been startled out of a daydream. “Oh,” she said, smiling, “not in the freshman buildings. Some of the upperclassmen have them, but these are too old.” She shook her head, and turned back toward the door. Annabeth felt herself start to sweat as she shuffled out into the hall. _Hopefully Percy gets air conditioning in whatever those praetor’s accommodations they mentioned are._ She’d been planning to live with him anyway, so these hotboxes were just extra incentive.

After a sweep through a complex of academic buildings styled after a Roman forum, the guide led Annabeth out to the main quad. The grassy expanse was bordered on three sides by low, sprawling academic buildings. On the fourth stood the campus library, a huge domed structure fronted by wide-based columns. The doors stood open to allow cool morning air into the building, and they entered into a cavernous room, illuminated by sunlight pouring through stained-glass windows. Bookshelves lined the walls, and hallways holding more stacks led off at cardinal intervals. The guide stopped them in the middle of the floor, directly beneath the domed ceiling’s highest point. “The dome is the tallest building on campus, and the glass is original to the structure.” The guide said, waving up towards the circle of light the windows created.

“Who designed it?” Annabeth asked, wracking her brain for architects who might have been Romans. Most of the ones she knew were either too modern to have done something like this, or acted nothing like Romans at all.

“Frank Furness. Son of Minerva, one of the better-known ones around here.”

_Furness._ She hadn’t heard the name outside of a few mentions in the books she’d read.

“Hey,” the guide said, “I’ve got to use the bathroom. Wait here, I’ll be right back!” She turned and breezed towards one of the corridors. Left to her own devices, Annabeth looked around for a place to sit. She saw a chair by one of the curved bookshelves, but changed direction before she reached it. She might not get another chance to look through the library’s collection, since the girl leading her around seemed intent on getting the tour over with as fast as possible. Stopping next to a random shelf, she began scanning titles. She’d happened upon the biographies, and the collection skewed predictablyRoman. At least ten titles relating to Aurelius, and another five on Antonius, sat lined up at eye level. She strode down the aisle, spotting a few books on the great Greeks of history, but nothing about anyone from after the Empire fell, save for some seemingly random works on figures ranging from Alexander Hamilton to Frederick Douglass. Had they been children of Rome? Legacies? She glanced around, searching for anything on the architect named Furness, and, after a few moments, spotted one near the top of the shelf.

“Oh, um, could you put that back? Please?” Annabeth turned, and there stood the guide, looking a little shocked.

“Sorry, I just wanted a quick look.” What was with this place? Did they think she’d run off with a book?

“It’s fine. We just have to be careful with these older books. Here, let’s head over to the dining hall!” Forcing a smile, she motioned for Annabeth to follow. _What the fuck?_ She felt like a kid in a jewelry store, the owner hovering to make sure she didn’t pocket anything valuable. Did they treat all Greeks like this here, or just the ones without Legion tattoos? She’d ask Percy when they met back up.

_________

“So, how was your tour?” Percy asked between bites of hamburger. They’d met up in the cafeteria after their respective jaunts around campus, Percy looking significantly less peeved than Annabeth felt.

Annabeth frowned. “Let’s just hope there’s air conditioning in whatever they showed you, because the freshman dorms _do not_ have it.”

“You’re kidding.” He wiped some stray mustard from his cheek. “Yeah, the praetor’s apartments had it, but they’re small. Basically single rooms with a nice view, seemed like.”

“And can I live there?”

He grimaced. “No. I asked; they said the freshman rooms are set once people get in. After the first year you can live off-campus, but freshmen live where they’re sent, and they never mix genders.”

“Guess I’ll just have to sneak in, then.”

“You? Sneaking around to sleep with your boyfriend?” Percy leaned in, smirking. “That’s edging on scandalous, Beth.”

“Good. This place could use some.” The nickname was new, something he’d started using after they returned from Camp. It had earned him an elbow in the ribs the first time, but now she liked it. It was something only he could ever call her, after all. She looked around, making sure her tour guide was well out of earshot. “It honestly reminds me of that military school Nico and Bianca went to.”

“Yeah, I thought things eased up once people got out of the Legion, but the old praetors and centurions run everything. Not all of them are as Greek as Jason, either.” Percy finished the burger, and started on his generous helping of fries. They ate in silence for a few moments, before Annabeth spoke again.

“It’s not really what I was expecting, to be honest. Doesn’t feel like what I thought a college would.”

“And what does college feel like?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “More relaxed, I guess, less regimented. Not being watched like I’m about to steal the books off the shelves would be great, too.”

“Yeah,” he said, mouth full of fries. “Half the time I was on the tour, I felt like I was back in the barracks. Really strict for what’s basically a legion retirement home. But we’ve still got time to look around if you want. Besides, Frank and Hazel said they’d meet us after lunch. Show us around a little. They like us, at least.”

Annabeth brightened at the notion. “Good,” she said. “It’ll be nice seeing them. Wonder where Jason is, though.”

“He and Piper went off to her dad’s ranch.” Percy’s eyes flashed with mirth. “Something about rest and relaxation.”

“Can’t blame them, can we?” Annabeth stood, taking her empty tray with her. “Here, let’s go meet Frank.”

______

Annabeth knew she would have been remiss to visit California without seeing her father. She hadn’t planned to do more than visit his house, but when she mentioned her plans, Sally had insisted on staying an extra day so Annabeth could have some time with her family. She appreciated the gesture, of course, but the idea of spending more than a few hours with the parents she’d left when she was seven gave her the same feeling in the pit of her stomach as when she knew something dangerous was lurking around. The dinner they’d all met up for after she and Percy toured New Rome hadn’t been so bad. Her dad had been happy to see her, and they’d caught up on everything she and Percy had done between Mount Tam and Tartarus. She left out all the parts about them almost dying, and described Greek Hell in only the vaguest of terms. No sense in scaring Matthew and Bobby when her stepmom was already watching her like a hawk. _Typical._ Helen had been most of why she’d left in the first place, and the woman hadn’t lost a step when it came to suspicion. Her eyes flicked around the restaurant all through dinner, probably searching for whatever she imagined a hellhound looked like. At least the food had been good. Sushi was something she just couldn’t find in New York, unless she wanted to spend more than was wise. Here, in California, the stuff was everywhere. Percy got a few strange looks from her brothers for ordering a steak, but he didn’t seem to care. He hated eating fish. After dinner, her dad made her promise to come by the next day to see his and Helen’s new house, which he said was both larger and closer to the city than the one she’d grown up in. She accepted, of course, knowing that the day would probably end up being awkward and uncomfortable, but she didn’t see her dad enough and now was her chance.

Her parents rolled up outside the hotel the next morning, Helen behind the wheel of a jet-black Lexus. Percy whistled as the car passed, gliding to a silent halt. She elbowed him in the side, but had trouble disagreeing with him. It really was a nice car. Probably paid for with Helen’s money, based on how proud she’d sounded of her new upper-management job at some company Annabeth couldn’t remember. She turned around for a goodbye kiss, not caring if her dad saw, and ducked into the back seat. She had to share with Bobby and Matthew, of course, and the back seat of a sport-sedan wasn’t exactly generous in terms of legroom. But the ride was smooth, and Helen seemed to regard speed limits as bad suggestions. They breezed through residential traffic, and, in less than half an hour, had arrived in a neighborhood richer than the chocolate in the cake she’d helped bake for Percy’s birthday. Annabeth gawked out the window as houses reminiscent of Olympian temples breezed past. Manicured lawns backed up to a forested hillside, growing smaller as the road wound up a narrowing ravine. Eventually, Helen hung a left into an up-sloped driveway lined with black flagstones. Annabeth thew the door open, glad to get her feet on solid ground. The house she stared up at was twice the size of the one she’d grown up in. A steep Victorian roof, punctuated with a peaked turret, loomed over a wide porch that ran for half the width of the structure. It was a beautiful building, something her mother would have drawn up in the margin of a notebook, if goddesses did that kind of thing.

“So, what do you think?” Her dad asked. “We just finished it about a month ago.”

“It’s…” she hesitated, wondering what to say. The house really was pretty, and she could tell that her dad had been the one to make most of the decisions. Helen would have demanded some McMansion monstrosity, she was sure. “It’s really nice, actually. Looks like you put a lot of thought into it, and it paid off.”

Her dad nodded, a grin wrinkling the half of his face she could see. “Glad you think so. You’re the architecture nerd here, I just read the books you left when you last visited. I have those for you, by the way. If you want.”

“Oh, that’d be great, actually!” She’d left a small stack of books on everything from Wright to three-axis drawing at the old house. “Thanks for grabbing them when you moved.”

“Wouldn’t think of leaving them, or anything else of yours.” Her dad grimaced, looking towards the garage. “We’ll have to dig them out of a box, since most stuff still isn’t moved in, but we’ll manage.” He motioned towards the front door. “Here, let’s let your brothers get settled. I’ll show you around inside.”

The house was as big inside as it was outside. A central staircase wound up to the second floor, which ran around the walls like a balcony. An iron chandelier hung high, between the railing and a set of huge windows meant to let morning sunlight illuminate the main room. Patterned wooden floors and off-white walls made the whole place feel rustic, like a summer palace somewhere in the European countryside. her dad led the way through the living room, complete with a fireplace and gigantic television sitting atop a table covered in video-game boxes, and from there into the kitchen. He pointed out details and quirks like a seasoned realtor, and Annabeth got the feeling that he’d given this tour to more than a few of his friends. She realized then that she had no idea what he did for work, aside from that he taught history at UC Berkeley, and he was too busy pacing up the stairs and pointing out that yes, the chandelier did have wiring hidden in the armature, for her to fit a word in edgewise.

“And here’s where we’ll put your things,” her dad said, opening a door at the end of the second-floor balcony. She ducked inside, and entered a small room with windows overlooking the neighbor’s house. A few boxes sat in the corner, blocking the closet doors. Aside from them, the walls were bare. She was suddenly glad for the tiny bathroom she and Percy and his parents all shared in New York. At least they had senses of privacy. Here, she realized, she’d end up sharing with her half-siblings, and that sounded like a fate worse than a week in the Ares cabin. She’d had to sit next to them both on the trip here, and could still smell the aerosol deodorant they both used like Agent Orange.

“Well, what do you think?” She blinked, realizing her dad was asking her something.

“It’ll fit everything I had in the old house.” And it would, by her estimate. There was a little more floor space than her old room, if nothing else. “And besides, most of it’ll be in boxes.”

Her dad’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re planning to stay in New York?”

“Yeah. I’m already enrolled in school, and I really don’t want to move across the country right now.” There were about a hundred other reasons she could have named, most of them having to do with Percy and her proximity to him, but those would probably just make her dad want her living here even more.

“Schools here are just fine, you know. Matthew and Bobby are getting along pretty well.”

“I know, but the place I’ll be going is-“

“Closer to Percy, I know.” Her dad sighed. “I am glad he’s with you, Annabeth, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that all this is happening faster than I think I expected, and me just letting you run off and live with your boyfriend feels… irresponsible”

Annabeth bit her tongue, trying not to interrupt. She wanted to ask when, exactly, he’d decided he had a say in what she did, but thought better of it. She probably wouldn’t see him again for a long time after today, and the least she could do was try to enjoy herself. “It’s what I want to do.”

“And I appreciate that.” He leaned over, staring out the window. Avoided her gaze the best he could. “I just feel like I have to say something.”

“Well, you did. And I really don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?”

Her dad didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he shook his head, and turned to face her. “Yeah, I understand. I do want to discuss it more later, though.” He opened the door, looking dour. “Here, come see the yard. There’s even a trail up he hill, you’ll like the view.” Annabeth followed. _What had just happened?_ Her dad hadn’t necessarily approved her staying in New York, but he hadn’t tried to force her into remaining here. _Yet._ The possibility of him pulling the Dad card remained, remote as it felt to her. Frederick Chase was not the confrontational type. He backed down unless he knew he had the winning hand, or a Sopwith Camel loaded up with celestial-bronze ammunition. He had to know that she wasn’t going to take threats from him seriously, didn’t he? _Oh, screw it._ They’d talk later, just like he said. For now, some fresh air sounded good.

The trail through a pine forest as it approached the hilltop. It was a really beautiful little hike, Annabeth thought. Her dad led the way, Helen, Bobby, and Matthew trailing close behind. She hung back a few paces, enjoying the morning breeze. it rustled the pine needles, making a _whooshing_ noise that reminded her of a ship under sail. She dropped back further, trying to get away from the racket her half-siblings made as they shouted about some movie or another. She missed New York, she realized then, with its deafening streets and constant traffic. At least that wasn’t just one noise, repeated over and over until her ears bled. She could get lost in street sounds, finding a thread and chasing it back into obscurity. The exercise was calming, a way to anchor her thoughts to something outside of themselves. Once the twins were twenty yards up-trail, the forest sounds came back in earnest. Birdsong and whistling wind reasserted themselves, and she resumed her prior pace. Not the same as Times Square, but good in its own way. She let her mind wander, and followed it up the trail. 

Ten minutes later, she reached the top of the hill. The path terminated in a roughly circular dirt patch amid patches of tall grass. Her dad, Helen, and the twins were already there, staring south and pointing at something on the horizon. She peered over the trees, and realized that she could see the San Francisco skyline, all the way from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge.

“Told you the view was good.” Her dad said, sounding satisfied. He stood next to her, having left Helen to watch her half-brothers. “We actually picked the house out because of this view. It’s maybe a half mile down to the house, and we couldn’t pass up the picnics.”

“It’s a nice spot. Probably beautiful after dark, too,” Annabeth said, imagining the bridges and skyscrapers, all lit up like the Fourth of July.

They spent maybe ten minutes on the hilltop, watching stormclouds roll in over the Bay. Windblown leaves tumbled across the trail, and the grass dipped in undulating waves. Annabeth shivered, and rolled down the sleeves on her flannel. She’d forgotten how frigid California wind was, even in summer. Once again, she found herself missing New York. The summer humidity meant that a breeze was pleasant, and not a reason to bring a jacket hiking in the middle of August. She thought about asking if they could start heading down the hill, but decided to wait. One of her brothers would start to complain in a few minutes, and then Helen would usher them all down regardless of what anyone else wanted.

Annabeth brought up the rear on the way down. Bobby had started complaining about the wind, right on time, and Helen had suggested that they head back to the house. Her dad seemed to sense that she wanted some space, or maybe his conversation with Helen was too interesting to break away from. Either way, she’d lost thirty yards on the rest of the group. She was as alone as she’d been on the way up, but something felt different. She couldn’t decide what, specifically, was wrong, until she realized that the forest had gone quiet. No birds, or rustle of rodents. Only wind in the needles, rustling like dry paper. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Forests were _always_ noisy. Grover had taught her that, the first time he’d showed her around the woods at Camp. Be it a warbler in a bush, a waterfall beating itself to mist against a rock, or a woodpecker hunting for insects in a tree trunk, there was always something happening amidst the trees. But not now. She slowed to a halt, hand searching her waistband for the dagger she’d stowed there that morning. There were supposed to be mountain lions near here. Had one found its way up the hill? Even then, though, birds didn’t care about big cats. Then the woods erupted in noise. One of her half-brothers shouted, drowned out by a deep, throaty roar. 

“Shit!” Annabeth raced down the trail, grabbing at her waistband for the dagger she’d hidden. The balance was all wrong, and the blade too short, but it was what she had. She rounded the last bend in the trail, and saw Bobby, cut off from the house by a towering Laistrygonian. It was unarmed aside from its two huge, hairy, well, arms, and its head snapped around as she dived past it, placing herself between her half-brother and the giant. It charged, and Bobby fled before it. Annabeth had no idea what he saw through the Mist, but it couldn’t have been good, because he tore straight down the trail. The replacement dagger was in her hand now, bad balance and all, and she pulled her Yankees cap on just in time to watch the giant take a swing at where her half-brother had been a second before. Gods, Helen was going to _kilI_ her. She ducked around the monster’s arm, lunging forward and letting the knifepoint sink deep in its back. The usual explosion of golden dust staggered her back. This one had been easy. The Laistrygonian hadn’t even touched her. She brushed the dust from her shirt, checked a second time for injuries, and strode down the path. The fence line came into view, and there stood Bobby, sobbing and pointing back up the trail. Annabeth waved, and her dad returned the gesture. Helen only stared, the turned to snap at him. His hand dropped to his side, and he grimaced.

“You alright?” He asked, approaching as she neared the yard. Helen hung back, an arm around her son.

“I’m fine, dad,” Annabeth said as she returned his embrace. “Not even a scratch. Is Bobby OK?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Scared, but fine, thank the gods.” Relief was plain on his face, but she wasn’t sure whether or not it was because Bobby wasn’t hurt, or because Helen hadn’t started shouting yet. He led her back to the porch, opening one of the French doors. “Here, let’s get inside before more show up”

“Hold the fucking phone!” Annabeth groaned. Helen was striding up the porch, sunglasses glinting over a scowl that would have made Hera proud. She grabbed the door out of her dad’s hand, and slammed it. “You’re not coming anywhere near this house!”

“Helen, come on, it wasn’t-“

“Shut up, Frederick, for once in your life! That goddamn kid of yours almost got our son killed, and if you’re going to defend her then you can leave with her!” She leaned in, standing on her toes to look Annabeth in the eye through her mirrored lenses. “I know it was a mistake to let you show up here!” Helen’s hand whipped around out of nowhere, but Annabeth was faster. She grabbed her stepmom’s wrist, freezing the slap in midair. Her manicured hand flopped forward, and Annabeth wrenched away, backing up and putting distance between her and Helen.

“It’s me or her, Frederick! Me or her!” Helen screamed. She stalked back to the porch door, opening it and stepping inside. Her dad glanced back and forth, eyes deer-in-headlights wide. Towards her, over to the door, and back. Then he sighed, and Annabeth’s heart dropped.

“I’ll call you a cab, sweetheart. Just wait on the driveway.” He opened the door. “I’m sorry.” He ducked inside, shut the door, and disappeared from view.

Annabeth blanched. What, exactly, had just happened? She’d known that Helen disliked her, but to the point of locking her out of the house? And her dad had gone along with it? _Fucking hell!_ The bottle of scotch Paul kept by the sink seemed really damn appealing right now. She checked the area, looking for any friends the Laistrygonian might have brought with it. Nothing looked out of place. Just towering pines and a few crows wheeling above the road. She sat against a fencepost, the sun hot on her neck. How had her dad gone from flying to her rescue in a literal wooden fighter plane to slamming a door in her face? It was Helen, had to be. No way was a history professor on her dad’s salary able to afford a house this large and close to the city on his own. So, was it really any wonder he’d left? He had to choose between a daughter he’d never really wanted and a family he’d made for himself. So he’d made what was, in his mind, the rational choice. Cold, logical, and ruthless. No surprise that Athena would end up attracted to someone like that. She couldn’t even hate him for it.

_______

The cabbie pulled up outside Annabeth’s hotel, and she dropped five dollars on the passenger seat. The guy had gotten her here faster than she had any right to expect, and she was sure her dad hadn’t done more than pay the minimum. Couldn’t have any of Helen’s hard-won cash going to help the bastard child, could he? Not like it mattered now. She’d be back in New York by tomorrow night, thank the gods, and way the hell away from here. This whole trip had been a wash. The university tour had gone about as badly as one could expect, and she was pretty sure her dad had just disowned her. She guessed that Percy and his parents were still out and about, so, after rinsing off the sweat and monster dust in the hotel shower, she lay down on the couch and turned on a ball game. Oakland and Anaheim, seventh inning. The Athletics were up by six, too many for a comeback, but she didn’t care. Watching baseball almost always turned her brain off whether she wanted it to or not, and right now, that felt more than a little necessary.

She woke up to the door opening. Percy barged inside. “Annabeth? You’re back early.”

“We finished early.” He raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. She shook her head, frowning. _Later,_ she mouthed. This was _not_ a conversation she wanted to be having right now.

“Well, that’s good news,” Paul said, setting his camera bag on the table. “We’ll have time to clean up before dinner. How was the day?”

“Pretty good, the house is nice. We took a hike, turns out you can see most of the city from a hill near where my dad lives.”

“Should’ve given you my camera,” Paul said. “Golden Gate was so crowded I couldn’t get a decent shot of the Bay.”

“You went to the Golden Gate Bridge?” Annabeth asked, perking up. She’d walked across it once in her life, when she last visited her dad, and hadn’t brought a camera.

“Yeah, there were too many tourists to even get near the railing,” Percy said, “but we walked the whole thing.”

They ended up eating more sushi, at Annabeth’s request. Paul had visited the Bay Area when he was in the service, he said, and he’d sampled a few of the local fish-cutters. This one was good, and Percy seemed to have picked up on the fact that she really didn’t want to talk about what had happened that morning. He was pretty perceptive for a seaweed brain, at least when it came to her, and he tried to steer conversation away from anything that involved her parents. He mostly succeeded, though Annabeth knew Sally suspected that not all had gone well between her and her dad. She’d probably ask about it later, and Annabeth would answer, but only if the subject was brought up. Paul and his army stories held everyone’s attention for most of the meal anyway. He’d apparently spent time in Europe, and done a lot of hiking up and down the Alps. How someone as mild-mannered as Paul Blofis could drive around northern Bosnia in an armored personnel carrier, like he apparently had, she’d never know. He didn’t act at all like a warrior, but, Annabeth reminded herself, he wasn’t one. He was a soldier, and soldiers weren’t something Camp Half-Blood had much of. Professional armies were a very Roman concept. Greek hoplites, Annabeth knew, were part-timers. They fought during the campaign season, then went back to their lives in Athens and Sparta and Corinth. Kind of like how Camp’s numbers swelled in summer and tapered off during the rest of the year. Most kids, Percy included, went back to their mortal families and friends for eight months, then came back the next May. Living to fight all year long was an efficient way to run an army, but, after spending too many winters at Camp with just Chiron and a few other year-rounders for company, she was tired of not having a break from the godly side of her life.

____________

They lay on the pull-out bed, half-watching the Yankees beat the Mariners. Percy had one hand in her hair, twirling a curl around his finger. “So,” he asked, shifting to face her. “What really happened today?”

Annabeth sighed, turning over on her side. “Laistrygonian attacked while we were hiking.”

His hand tightened around hers. “You alright?”

“Yeah, took care of it no problem. It scared the hell out of Bobby, though, and of course Helen blamed me for the whole thing.”

“Oh.” He relaxed. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Doesn’t she always do that?”

“That wasn’t the half of it. She flipped her shit at me, wouldn’t even let me back in the house. Told my dad he could leave with her or stay with me, so he went inside and called me a cab.”

Percy froze, reply half-caught in his throat. “He- he what?”

“Guess he decided the nice new house was worth more than me.” She shrugged, managing a smirk. “In fairness, it’s a big house.”

“Annabeth, that’s… that’s completely fucked up!” She let him pull her close. “How does someone do something like that?”

“It’s what it is, Percy. I’m used to it. Ran away when I was seven, remember?”

“I know, it’s just weird. I remember talking to your stepmom, and she seemed nice enough. Even cooked for Thalia and I when we were looking for you. And your dad, his stunt with the plane…”

“Yeah. I think Helen still felt bad over how she acted when I was younger. Now I attract monsters way more than when I was a kid, so of course when one of them tries coming after her son, she goes right back to blaming me. As for my dad, well, I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure he actually wants me around. Maybe he does; maybe he just feels guilty for me leaving.” Even by Athena standards, Annabeth knew she sounded detached, and maybe that was a good thing. She’d spent most of the time between running away and going on the quest for Zeus’ master bolt blaming herself for leaving. At some point along the way, she’d come to the decision that a seven-year-old girl shouldn’t have to handle problems that her parents were supposed to solve. That maybe she’d been driven away, and shouldn’t blame herself for making what seemed at the time to be a smart choice.

“Earth to Annabeth, you all there?” Percy shook her shoulder, and she snapped back to the present.

“Sorry. Got lost in my head.” She sighed, sitting up and stretching. “I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m good, much as I can be. But you’re still cute when you’re worried.”

That got Percy to grin, and Annabeth felt herself smiling along with him. Him being here made the last twelve hours easier to deal with, if only because she knew he’d listen to whatever she said and not try to argue. The ball game played on in front of them, Yankees still well in the lead. If this was what life without constantly looking over her shoulder was like, Annabeth decided that she was just fine with it. But, even so, maybe New Rome wasn’t such a good idea after all. She’d seen how the students would look at her, at least for the first year or so, and it was way worse than she got when she visited a new mortal school. Sure, the campus was safe from monsters. And the easy-in, tuition-free degree had obvious appeal. But she knew, and had known from the second it happened, that the look she got from her tour guide when she tried to do something as harmless as glance through a library book would never stop following her if she went back. Percy would have it easier thanks to the tattoo on his arm and his rank, but she’d be stuck in a heat-sink of a dorm room, trying to find time to see him when he wasn’t stuck doing whatever former praetors got roped into. But the academics seemed top-notch, and she’d dealt with worse than a few incredulous stares in the hallway. If she sat back and let her rational self take over, an academic year of living in a shitbox didn’t seem as bad when she factored in the fact that the place wouldn’t ever get blown to pieces by a chimera, and it wasn’t like she and Percy would drift apart, since she’d end up sneaking into his room most nights anyway. It wouldn’t be fun, but they’d be close to old friends. That, at least, was something. She looked over at Percy, wondering why he hadn’t tried shaking her out of her head again. He lay next to her, mouth open, asleep. She grinned. Only he could drop off like that. Reaching across him, she flicked the lights off. The Mariners were staging a comeback, and this was a decision for another day. She lay back, one arm around Percy, and lost herself in the game.


	5. 8 Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to school, and camp. Also back to Percy's POV, been a while since the happened.

It took about three days for Percy to remember why he hated school. At first, he’d actually enjoyed the change in routine. Going to class, listening to lectures, and even struggling through the relatively light load of homework made him use his brain for more than thinking about the past year, and that was a relief. Then Thursday hit, and he decided that summer couldn’t come soon enough. The only course he actually liked was the automotive-mechanics class he’d signed up for to fill schedule space. Wrenching on the crappy old cars the school bought off a scrapyard felt intuitive, and all the shop manuals were in plain English.

At least Annabeth was there to blunt the boredom. They had precisely zero classes in common, what with her being in three AP courses and taking electives that he probably wasn’t allowed in the classroom for. Advanced Drafting? What did that even mean? But they ate lunch together, and it wasn’t like he didn’t see her every day at home. His mom and Paul had quietly stopped caring whether or not they slept in his room. Maybe they knew she could beat the stuffing out of him if he tried anything stupid. Maybe they just wanted their couch back. Who knew? He wouldn’t be asking.

The main perk of going back to school was the swim team. He’d considered joining in the past, but had decided against it on grounds of fairness, and because that he’d slept through the meeting you had to go to in order to try out. Annabeth had practically thrown him out of bed the morning this year’s tryouts happened, though, so, starting today, he had two hours of practice after school every day until December. They’d been supposed to start on Monday, but the pool had been closed for renovation over the summer and the construction crew had finished late. So, after last-period pre-calculus, he found his way to the locker room and changed into his ratty old swim trunks. He was halfway through tossing his book-bag in the locker he’d staked claim to when one of his teammates walked in. 

“Dude, what the hell happened?”

“Huh?” Percy turned to see Lee Hodges, a senior he knew from his geography class, mouth wide in shock and staring at him. “What do you mean?”

“Your side. Looks like you got in a sword fight!”

“Oh.” Percy felt his face go red. He knew someone was bound to ask about the scar at some point, but he hadn’t thought about it any further. He searched for an explanation, something that didn’t involve explaining the particulars of Greek hell-beasts. “Rock-climbing accident.” He said. It was the first thing to pop into his head. “Was climbing a summer ago and the rope snapped, I fell twenty feet right past a sharp rock.” 

Lee blinked, processing the idea. Glanced up and down the ragged wound. Then he nodded, “Shit, man. Glad you’re okay.”

“Didn’t even feel it at first. Weird how adrenaline works.” That, at least, was true. Percy shrugged. “Anyway, we should go. Coach’ll wonder what’s up.”

The pool, Olympic-sized and set ten feet below ground level, sat in a high-ceilinged building connected to the locker room by a downsloped tunnel. Stone bleachers rose from the deck to the walls, like giant stairs up to long, narrow windows that ran the length of the structure. A few students peppered the seats, doing homework or chatting amongst themselves. One of them waved, and Percy looked up to see Annabeth, looking up from her book and waving. He grinned and waved back, and would have stopped in his tracks, but Lee strode past him. “Let’s go, man. Schmooze later!”

“Later” turned out to be after two hours of the hardest swimming Percy had ever done. He wasn’t tired, not really, but forcing himself to do all the work without pushing himself along with the current made everything harder. But the workout felt good. Like a nice, long morning in the sword arena at Camp, with less risk of decapitation. He was look forward to doing it all again tomorrow, after a nice long shower and a big dinner. Paul’s habit of staying late to grade papers and help students also saved Percy and Annabeth from taking the subway back across town, since he always drove to school.

____________________

“So, you two have any plans for the weekend?” Percy’s mom asked as she ladled potato-leek soup into her bowl. Dinner had become a pleasant routine, with the Jacksons and Annabeth taking time to sit down and forget grading and chores and homework for a half-hour or so. 

“We were thinking we’d head up to Camp, if that’s alright,” Percy said between spoonfuls of soup. He and Annabeth hadn’t been back since they left after the war ended, and had begun to miss the place. Annabeth wanted to see how the rebuilding work was going, and check in on her half-siblings. Percy would be content to sit on the beach with her, and catch up with Nico if he was around. And see Chiron, of course. 

“If you think you can get your homework done, then I don’t see a problem.” Paul would be the one to mention schoolwork, of course. But what else was a teacher supposed to say?

“Won’t be a problem.” Percy hadn’t had much assigned anyway, and he could knock out most of it before the weekend. 

“Annabeth?” His mom asked. 

“I’ll be fine,” she replied through a mouthful of asparagus. “And I’ll make sure this one gets his work done too.” 

And so, early Saturday morning, Paul threaded his way through Long Island traffic, taking the 495 east until it turned into just another surface street. He and Percy’s mom said they’d head up to Montauk and swing back by Camp on Sunday afternoon. Percy spent most of the drive up watching the city fly by his window. Annabeth had brought about half her textbooks along, and asked him why he wasn’t doing the same, but he’d begged off by saying that he couldn’t do advanced math at the best of times, let alone when the Ares kids were out behind their cabin practicing small-unit combat and making a racket to wake the dead. She’d accepted that, but made him promise to finish everything before dinner on Sunday so they could go catch a movie afterward. 

Two hours after leaving the apartment, Paul slid the car to a halt next to the familiar slope of Half-Blood Hill. Grabbing his backpack from the trunk, Percy checked his pocket for Riptide, knowing he probably wouldn’t need it. After hugging his mom and Paul goodbye, he watched as they piled back into the little sedan. 

“Ready?” Annabeth asked, watching his parents drive off up the road. 

“Let’s go!” He put on a confident face, not sure how ready he actually was to go back to the scene of the last real battle he’d fought. The last time they’d been here, a primordial earth-goddess had been trying to pulverize them, while a crazed augur did his best to turn the Romans against Percy and his friends. But not going back had never been an option, and it really would be good to see a few old friends. So he shrugged his pack on, took Annabeth’s hand, and climbed the hill. 

Camp looked run-down, thanks to the lingering effects of the battle. Some of the cabins were only half-rebuilt, but work seemed to be getting underway. A group of campers, mostly children of Hephaestus and a few Athena kids, had set up an outdoor workshop in the center of the pavilion, and were working on what looked like roof-beams for the Ares cabin. It still had a boulder embedded in the outer wall, but Percy guessed that they’d left it there on purpose. Athena’s cabin was still partially in ruins, and it seemed that reconstruction had focused on making it livable rather than restoring its looks. A big blue tarp was lashed to the roof and part of the wall, covering a hole the side of a family sedan. Percy’s jaw clenched. He’d watched the boulder that made that hole almost take Will Solace’s head off. 

“Shit, things are worse than I thought,” Annabeth half-mumbled. “They’ve barely fixed anything!”

“In fairness, I think everyone took off after summer vacation ended.” Annabeth was right, of course. Poseidon’s cabin had barely been touched since Gaia had broken half the shingles off the roof with a swipe of her hand, and all that covered the holes now was a square of painter’s cloth. He shrugged. “Besides, I know you’d rather do the designs yourself.”

“Yeah, that and Olympus, too. Lots to do.”

A pang of guilt shot through him. His disappearing act had probably killed any time she had set aside to work on rebuilding Olympus after the Titan War. She’d been so excited about that, her chance to take what she put on paper and see it built in stone and mortar. Instead, she’d ended up looking for him. “Yeah, sorry about that. Kinda delayed things, didn’t I?”

Annabeth grabbed his arm, pulling them to a stop. “Percy.” Her eyes bored into his, grey and shining. “You know I don’t blame you for disappearing, right?”

“I did disappear, though, and you had to come looking.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he heard her whisper, and he realized she had her arms around him, his chin resting on her shoulder. “And I don’t blame you, not ever.”

He knew she was right. He hadn’t chosen to get teleported to the other side of the continent. Knowing that didn’t stop the nagging in his head, though. the little voice that said _he_ was the reason she’d lost a year of her life. That, were it not for him, she wouldn’t be wearing high-collared shirts to cover the wound she’d taken in Tartarus. All he could do was nod.

“I love you,” she said, just loud enough to pick up over the sound of the Hephaestus cabin sawing away.

“Love you too.” He squeezed her hand. “I know you’re right. Just try telling my brain that.”

“I’ll tell it ’til it listens, Kelp Head.” She turned away, and puled him down the path towards the Big House. “But yeah, I know what you mean. I still feel like shit about Tartarus.”

“Still wasn’t your fault, Beth.”

“I know, but like you said, good luck convincing me.” Annabeth sighed. “But it’s what it is.”

By then, they’d reached the Big House and its covered porch. The usual trio of old Adirondack chairs looked out over the two rows of cabins, and Mr. D sat in one with a can of Diet Coke on the deck next to him. He stirred, looking up from the latest issue of _Napa Valley Confidential_. Zeus must have sent him back down here to serve the rest of his sentence as Camp Director, because he looked about as bored and disgusted as always.

“Well, if it isn’t Perkins and Anna Karenina! Back from New York to grace us with your presence, are we?”

“Hello to you too, Mr. D.” He had to be making these names up out of thin air. Percy had no idea who Anna Karenina was, but her name sounded nothing like Annabeth’s, not even to someone who probably had more caffeine in his system than any mortal could survive. 

“I’m guessing you’re here to see Chiron, and not me, so just head inside and he’ll be in the main office.” He waved a hand, pointing lazily to the door.

Then Annabeth surprised him. She stopped on the stair, and asked, “No, actually. We never found out where Pollux went when Camp got attacked. Is he alright?” 

Dionysus blanched, blinking hard at them. “Pollux... Pollux is well. Had to move into the Hermes cabin for a while, since my cabin’s got its door blown in and the walk is torn up, but he’s well.” He seemed surprised that anyone had asked, and, aside from Chiron, Percy suspected that Annabeth was the only one who had. 

“I, well. I suppose I ought to thank you, Johnson, for keeping an eye on him during that unpleasantness with the Titans.”

“He looked after himself, really. All I did was keep him out of the fighting when he got hurt."

“And for your help, I am… thankful.” The god of madness shook his head, his face liquefying back into its usual punch-drunk stare. “But enough of that! I have a can of cola to finish, so do be a lad and bring me another when you’re done inside.” He waved at the door again, and Annabeth led the way inside. 

“You sure he isn’t spiking that Coke?” Percy whispered, once they shut the door behind them and he was sure Dionysus wouldn’t hear. “He’s never been this nice.”

“At this point I’d believe anything.” Annabeth shrugged, and knocked on the office door. Muffled music came from inside, but it stopped mid-chord. 

“Come in!” 

Annabeth opened the door, revealing Chiron in his wheelchair, sitting behind his makeshift desk. 

“Percy, Annabeth.” Chiron looked up, smiling at them both. “I’ll admit I hadn’t expected to see you this soon, but I’m glad you’ve come.” He rolled backward, motioning to the chairs in front of his desk. “Please, sit!”

The chairs were as threadbare and comfortable as Percy remembered. “Good to see you too, Chiron,” Percy replied. “How have things been?”

“Rebuilding is slow, especially since most of the campers have left for the fall semester. But we’re managing, even with our latest quest upon us already.” 

“Another one?” Annabeth asked.

“I’m afraid so. We’ve been spared a prophecy, though.” Chiron’s eyes darted to the ceiling, up towards the Oracle’s old attic. Percy realized then that he hadn’t seen Rachel Dare in about a year. Was she still oracle-ing, or would she have gone back to wherever school was for someone whose parents were that loaded? He blinked _,_ and refocused on Chiron. “Three weeks ago,” he said, “We got a message. From Aphrodite herself. Seems someone stole the Apple of Discord” 

Chiron went on to rehash the story of Eris and her gilded fruit. The goddess of discord, full of spite after not being invited to the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, threw a golden apple inscribed with “For the Fairest” into the dining hall. A scrap between Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera ensued, and Zeus intervened by appointing Paris of Troy to judge who most deserved the fruit. His decision to choose Aphrodite and accept her bribe of the most beautiful woman in the world ended up starting the Trojan Wars and killing thousands of people, but Aphrodite kept her apple. “Had it with her at a very secret cabin in backwoods Minnesota, where she and Ares were meeting. Until now, it seems. Someone managed to steal it.”

“Any idea where it went? And why not ask the Hunters?’ Annabeth sounded more than a little incredulous. “They’re the ones who are good at finding things.”

“I asked that same question, my dear, but it seems Aphrodite and Artemis aren’t on the best terms lately.” The centaur rolled his eyes. “Something about Aphrodite trying to seduce the Hunters with good-looking men in safari gear the last time Artemis went to Africa.”

“And where’d the Apple go?”

“Luckily for us, Hephaestus figured out where his wife and Ares were shacking up, and set up a few of his traps. One of them tagged the thief with a tracker, and Connor and Cecil followed his signal up into Canada.”

“They make it back yet?” The sons of Hermes could handle themselves, Percy knew, but Canada presented a whole different level of danger when it came to monsters. Colder, further north, full of Tim Horton’s and poutine? The place was a Laistrygonian’s wet dream. 

“No, which is why Nico hasn’t found you two yet. He shadow-traveled up early this morning, after they didn’t IM into Camp like we’d planned.”

“That isn’t good,” Annabeth said, concern in her voice. “If there weren’t a problem, he’d be back.”

Chiron held up a hand. “We’ll know for sure tonight, since he said he’d travel back by then or send a message. For now, though, all we can do is wait.” He rolled around the side of the desk. “And perhaps take a walk. I could use the break from sitting inside. And you two can tell me what you’ve been up too since you left.”

Grabbing a Diet Coke for Dionysus from the fridge, Percy followed Chiron and Annabeth out onto the porch. Their old mentor ditched his wheelchair as soon as he was down the ramp, and walked next to them on four horse’s legs. They told him about New York, how Annabeth had moved in with Percy and his parents, and about their senior year. He didn’t seem surprised, which Percy supposed made sense. Chiron had been training heroes since before the Roman times, and he’d probably seen more than a few of his pupils pair off. When Annabeth mentioned the treatment she’d gotten on their tour of New Rome, though, the old centaur’s eyes narrowed. 

“I’d expected nothing less from that place, if I’m honest.” His voice went steely, like there always seemed to do when he talked about Romans. “Annabeth, when you and Reyna brought your mother’s Parthenos back here, it was only natural that us and Camp Jupiter would have better relations. And we’ve had a few Romans come through since, and they’ve been far more personable than I’ve grown used to, but old prejudice dies hard. I’ve done what I can to open Camp to them, but it seems they’re still suspicious. Given that the Roman rank-and-file were always more, shall we say, aware of our existence than you and the other campers were of theirs, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Yeah, honestly by the time I’d been to Camp Jupiter, I’d met Jason, and he seemed fine. So were all his friends, but the rest of New Rome wasn’t as…”

“Familiar with actual Greeks?” Chiron asked. Annabeth nodded.

“It’s an unfortunate thing, really. We could learn much from each other, I think, were we to sit down and have a talk, but I’m afraid that’s some years off.”

“Maybe us going to school there would help,” Annabeth mused. Percy was surprised. They’d barely discussed New Rome since their tour, and he’d sensed that she wanted to avoid the subject. They’d been so dead-set on going until that morning in the admissions office, and now neither of them really felt like talking about college at all. “Someone’s got to take the first step.”

Chiron shook his head. “As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t agree.” They’d reached the edge of the sand by now, past the new cabins being built for children of the minor gods, and Chiron stopped. He looked out over the beach, and out to the Sound. “As clichéd as I may sound, you only ever go to college once. Well, I’ve been a few times, actually, but that’s beside the point. You two get a chance to learn what you want to do with your lives, and it’d be a disservice to spend that chance somewhere you don’t unequivocally want to be.”

That pronouncement killed the conversation for a solid minute. Percy held Annabeth’s hand, staring towards the horizon and tracking the waves as they came in to shore. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t care where they went to school, as long as it was in the same place, but he stayed quiet. She was the one who had a real career in front of her, who actually had to think about what she’d pursue with a degree. If she wanted to take a chance on New Rome, he’d go with her, much as he disliked how the place looked at them. If she didn’t, then they’d go somewhere else. They’d found a way out of the Underworld. College couldn’t be much harder. 

They eventually made their way back to the Big House, where Chiron left Percy and Annabeth on the porch, saying he had to get back to working on the plans for rebuilding. He invited Annabeth to draw up whatever designs she liked, but had told her not to worry about doing anything that might end up causing more stress than it was worth. Faced with an afternoon to fill, they ended up wandering back around Camp. Many of the faces Percy saw were vaguely familiar at best, a consequence of being gone for almost a year, but he and Annabeth did manage to catch up with Sherman Yang at the sword arena, and with Lou Ellen and the rest of the Hecate cabin just before dinner. The evening meal and campfire passed in what Percy could only describe as a pleasant blur, punctuated by a few snickers at him and Annabeth. He was beyond caring. They had vanishingly little time before lights-out, and sleeping in separate cabins was the one thing about the weekend that Percy was not looking forward to. He knew they’d be fine in the end, of course. Camp was as safe as anywhere could be, and one night apart wouldn’t kill them. Even so, as the campfire died down and campers began filtering back to their cabins, he felt a sudden wave of anxiety well up. They were moments away from their first night apart in a month, and he grew more tense by the step. Poseidon’s cabin stood ahead of them, low facade growing wider with every step. His hand tightened around Annabeth’s, but she’d already locked her fingers into his. 

“Percy-“ Annabeth’s voice cracked, and she stopped in her tracks. Turning to face him, she ran her hands down his arms, staring at him like she was memorizing his face. “Please, just don’t be gone when I wake up.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and Percy pulled her in close. “I’ll be here in the morning, Beth. I promise.” She slumped against him, and he felt tears on his neck. They stood in place for a long moment, night wind blowing around them, before Annabeth stepped back. 

“You better not go anywhere, or I’ll find you and kick your ass.” Her eyes were wet, but she managed a half-smile. “And then I’ll go after whoever took you.”

“I know you would, but you won’t have to. Anyone wants me, they can come and try making me leave.” Smirking, he grabbed her hand. “Now come on, you’re freezing.”

“But we’re-“

“I’ll take you to your cabin.” He wasn’t about to make her relive that night last December, when she’d watched him walk inside the Poseidon cabin and not come back for months. She must have had the same thought, because she followed without another word. 

The Athena cabin loomed above them, lights still blazing. They’d go out soon, by Percy’s watch, but he had time to give Annabeth a long kiss goodnight. He knew some night-owl had probably seen them, and he didn’t care. Once he’d watched her duck inside, he crossed the grass to his father’s cabin, climbed the stairs, and stepped through the door. The place was just as he’d left it a month ago. A spare pair of jeans on the floor, a bath-towel hanging from one of the bunks. If he were doing more than visiting, he’d clean the place up. But, for now, all he wanted to do was shower off and fall into bed. 

His plan failed about ten minutes after he fell asleep. The dream knocked him awake, and he almost cracked his head on the top bunk as he sat up. One hand found Riptide and popped the cap, revealing a yard of glowing bronze that shone in the moonlight. “Annabeth? Annabeth!” Percy’s eyes shot to the bed, saw nothing but sheets and the shirt he’d tossed against the wall, and darted around the cabin. No sign of her. For a moment, he was back in the pit watching Annabeth convulse on the sand, foaming at the mouth as Akhlys’ poison ate away at her from the inside. He raised Riptide to strike, to send Misery back to the formless void, then his brain dropped back into gear. Blinking, he let the sword drop to his side. “Shit!” _It wasn’t real._ Not the poison, or the mist, or Annabeth melting away in front of him. Riptide slipped from his fingers, slicing his foot open as it clattered to the ground. He saw blood on the floor, but felt nothing. Every inch of him was covered in icy sweat, as were the bedsheets. _So much for being clean._ Groaning, he grabbed yet another pair of boxers and turned on the shower, running it as cold as he could. Once the sweat and blood had washed down the drain, he stepped out. Shivering, but wide awake. There would be no sleep tonight. He checked his watch, its hands glowing green in the half-light. Not even 11:30. Was Annabeth having the same trouble? If she were, she’d usually end up sleeping through it, but remembering whatever she dreamt about. That caused its own problems, of course, but it let her at least get some rest. 

Percy had just succeeded in reading a few pages of the novel Annabeth forgot on his bedside table when a booming crack rattled the windows. A flash of light from outside blinded him as he looked up, head spinning from the concussion. Sprinting to the window, he saw figures standing in the grass, weapons drawn. Riptide was still in the jeans he’d dropped at the foot of the bed, so he pulled them on before striding out the door, bare bronze clenched in one hand. Lights flickered on in a few of the cabins, and Percy heard excited chatter as campers rose to find out what had just woken them. He spotted Nico di Angelo, black blade drawn, looking like he’d just run a marathon. He staggered and fell, but another one of the figures caught him under the arms. Percy skidded to a halt ten feet away, bare feet sliding on the wet grass. 

“Shit, Nico, what happened?”

“Had to…. shadow-travel back. At least five Laistrygonians, too many….” The son of Hades got his feet under him, and the shadowy shape that now looked distinctly like Connor Stoll helped him up. “But we got the Apple!”

A crowd of half-lucid campers began to gather, and Percy felt a hand on his back. He turned to see Annabeth, drakon-bone sword in hand, leading a group of armored Athena campers in loose formation. 

“Wait,” Nico said, stumbling forward. “When’d you guys get back?”

“Visiting for the weekend.” Percy held out a hand, and Nico grabbed for his wrist, almost falling on his face. “Dude, just sit. Give it a few minutes.”

“Yeah, good idea.” He sank to the ground, groaning. “Really have to try not to do that without eating first.”

“Glad you did, man. Fuckin’ hockey giants almost got us!” Cecil Markowitz stepped into the growing circle of demigods, a bronze-tipped boar spear on his shoulder. He spotted Percy, and waved. 

“Hey, Cecil, how’s it been?”

“Not bad, aside from the time-jump there.” The son of Hermes shrugged. “When’d you come back?”

Annabeth had just begun answering when Chiron pushed through the crowd, longbow in one hand and a quiver on his belt. “What’s happened?” The centaur shouted over the din of conversation. “Is anyone hurt?”

“No, just… a little tired.” Nico held up the backpack he’d been wearing. “We got the Apple back, at least.”

Chiron’s eyes narrowed. “None of you touched it, looked at it?”

“No. Wrapped it in a beach towel and shoved it in there.” Connor Stoll gestured at the backpack, which Chiron had just opened. A golden glow spilled out as he rummaged around inside, lighting up his bearded face. He scowled. 

“Ah, yes. Intact, and in good condition.” He shut the bag, handing it back to Nico, who’d stood up and was now leaning against Will Solace. “This is one thing I’d sooner not set eyes on again. Aphrodite will be pleased, if nothing else.” 

Percy put his sword away. None of the giants had hitched a ride on Nico’s shadow-jump, and the only danger now was from Aphrodite’s apple. He wasn’t really sure what threat it posed, but Chiron seemed worried enough that he didn’t want anything to do with it. The crowd was dispersing now, but Annabeth stayed next to him as her cabin-mates put up their spears and headed back to bed.

“Forget your shirt?”

“Oh, guess so.” He hadn’t even noticed, so quickly had his brain jumped into combat mode. Annabeth‘s arm found its way around his waist, warm and sticky with sweat. Her face was flushed, hair slicked back. “You OK?”

“Can’t sleep, and it’s really damn hot in my cabin.”

“Yeah, same. I tried, woke up sweating like crazy.”

Concern crossed Annabeth’s face. “Bad dreams?” 

“Yep. Worst one in a long time.” Percy shut his eyes, fighting off the image of her dying on the sand. She grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard enough to snap him out of the memory. 

“Want to tell me about it?”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t help. What about you, did you get any rest?”

“I didn’t even try to sleep. Did homework instead. Last thing I need to do is wake up screaming when I’m surrounded by people.”

Percy grimaced. He hadn’t even thought about that particular advantage of living in his own cabin. Unless Tyson was visiting, or Annabeth had snuck in, he could wake up brandishing a sword and no one would be the wiser. Annabeth had cabin-mates to worry about. It wasn’t fair to her, but, aside from the occasional visit to Camp, it wasn’t an issue anymore. “Want to spend the night with me?” 

She smiled wanly, but shook her head. “I want to, Percy. But people will notice.”

“Do you care?”

Now she was actually smiling. “No, not really. But I’d rather not get sent to latrine duty as soon as we visit next time.”

“Good point, but if you’re there then it won’t be so bad.”

“You know I love you, right?”

He pulled Annabeth close. “You might have mentioned it,” Percy whispered, squeezing her to him. Their lips met. She tasted like salt and citrus, like _Annabeth,_ and he held them there until she pulled away, coming up for air. “But I do love when you say it.”

_________

Neither of them slept that night. Well, maybe Annabeth did, but she hadn’t exactly seemed eager to try either. Nico’s late-night arrival and its aftermath had taken a good thirty minutes to settle. That left eight hours before waking up made any sense. Percy didn’t even bother lying down. Doing so invited sleep, which invited dreams. After the one he’d had earlier, he’d sooner face down Ares again than go back to bed. So he sank into the couch and picked up where he’d left off in Annabeth’s book. The fact that he’d even considered reading to pass the time amazed him, but anything that kept his brain going also kept him awake. The words still blended together, but teasing them apart kept him awake, and that was just fine. He didn’t even mind the plot. It involved a struggling author writing under a false name, who decided to “bury” his pen-name in the town cemetery as a publicity stunt once his real identity was discovered. A few chapters in, Percy realized that the act of reading itself was making him tired, and he set the book down. The last thing he needed was to dream about serial-killer writers on top of his usual roster of monsters and unhappy immortals. He checked his watch. 1:27. _Damn!_ He felt like he’d been reading for hours. Standing up, knees and back popping, he paced to the window. The moon was up, shining bright over the sound. He had six hours and change left to kill, and nothing to do. 

Eventually, out of desperation more than anything else, he stripped his bunk and hung the sheets over one of the rafters. Better to let them dry off now, he figured, or they’d smell like sweat the next time he was here. Once he’d done that, he straightened up what he could, tossing dirty clothing into has backpack to take home and wash. It struck him as odd that he was actually kind of enjoying work he’d normally dread, but literally anything was better than falling back asleep. Even pre-calculus, the class he already knew he’d hate, was a superior option. Shame he’d left his books at home. Despite leaving the cabin looking better than it had since before he went into the Labyrinth, his cleanup job had taken almost no time. It was now two in the morning. Six hours before he could sit down, drink a cup of coffee, and not have to keep himself awake. “Gods damnit!” He bit down on a shout, and the curse come out strangled. This wasn’t _fair!_ The prodigal hero was supposed to win the fight, go back to his life, and be able to do basic shit like _sleep through the fucking night!_ But the stories where that happened were proving to be less and less true. Had the first Perseus stared at the wall on the bad nights? Had he paced the room, desperate to stay awake so he didn’t have to face his own mind? 

He might have cried, if he thought it would help. Probably would have done, if Annabeth were here. She made that kind of thing easier, more possible, because she accepted it when he wouldn’t do so for himself. But she wasn’t here, not that he could blame her. So he sat, face burning in embarrassment and anger, and stared at the floor. Memorized every knot and chip in the varnished boards. Wondered at how fast the sword-cut from when he’d dropped Riptide earlier had healed. Would water do that to his head if he let it? Probably not. But the thought got him to sit up. He had the rest of the night to kill. What harm would a trip up the Sound do? He could get out in the deep water, where things were still and calming and _safe._ If he couldn’t be with Annabeth for the night, then his father’s realm was the second best choice.

He didn’t push himself, didn’t try to make it a workout. Just rode the current, fifty feet below the surface, out in the middle of Long Island Sound. The water woke him up, sharpening his ragged nerves. They still felt fragile, like too much input would overpower them, but here, in the sea, that didn’t matter. The water lent him enough strength that he could stop worrying about whether or not his head would let him sleep for a night. It was just a shame that Annabeth would never be able to experience the feeling. He’d asked her if children of Athena had any elemental equivalent to what the ocean did for him, and she’d said that reading was the closest thing she could think of. Something about the act of getting lost in a book, of being immersed in knowledge, gave her the same buzz as the water gave him. He’d taken this to mean that he could buy her books for her birthday and be in her eternal good graces, but then she’d mentioned that, ever since she’d fallen into Tartarus, the effect had been reduced. Not because it didn’t happen when she sat down and read, but because she couldn’t concentrate on anything without her mind flashing back to the Pit. He hadn’t known what to say to that, other than to tell her that he’d do what he could to help, not mentioning that he felt totally helpless against that kind of enemy. A sword was good for the monsters he found in the real world, but the ones living in his and his girlfriend’s heads weren’t so easily handled. 

Percy emerged from the sea just after sunrise, drying himself with a shake of his head. The morning air stung, cold and biting on his bare back, but the sensation kept his mind alert. Finding his way back to the cabins, he ducked inside Poseidon’s. The novel sat on his bunk, splayed open to mark the page. Annabeth hated when he did that, but he was reading something. No way could she complain about that. He sat back down, unbuckled his watch, and forced himself to concentrate on the book and not the light filtering through the curtains. Finally, mercifully, he heard noise from outside as campers made their way to the dining pavilion. He shot to his feet, making sure he didn’t forget a shirt this time, and almost ran out the door. 

Breakfast tasted better than it had any right to. Percy had grown used to his mom’s pancakes-and-bacon special, but any food at all felt almost ambrosaic. Annabeth sat at Athena’s table, looking like she’d also stayed up all night, and it took most of Percy’s remaining patience to not walk over and sit next to her, rules be damned. But he waited, and suspected that she preferred that he did, if only to save them some trouble. They met up afterward anyway, and, since it was Sunday, had nothing to do but stroll around Camp. Percy was glad for the chance to walk. His early-morning swim, combined with two days of pool workouts, was making his left side stiffen up. The problem was the scar running down his left side. Enough hard exercise made that whole side of his body freeze in place, and taking it slow for a few hours seemed to be the only cure. Annabeth must have noticed him favoring one leg, because she stopped, one hand resting on his hip.

“You alright?”

“Just a little stiff. I took a swim last night.”

She sat on the ground by the path, grabbing his hand and pulling him down with her.

“I can still walk!”

“Yeah, but I’m tired, and besides, the grass feels nice.” And it did, Percy thought. The dew would soak them, but who cared? Camp never got all that cold. They lay there for a few minutes, hand-in-hand, staring at the sky. It was blue and cloudless, as always, with only the occasional contrail disrupting what was otherwise an azure monochrome. Percy had trouble believing that, barely more than a month before, this same patch of sky had been burning as the _Argo II_ went down. That memory wasn’t a good one, but it passed with the breeze. He shifted, suddenly restless.

“Want to go see Nico?” He asked, finally breaking the silence. 

“Sure!” They stood, half-soaked with dew. A few minutes’ walk brought them to the Hades cabin, which had survived Gaia’s onslaught almost untouched. A single hole in one of the windows, covered for the moment with a plywood square, seemed to be the only damage. Percy tried the door-knocker, an iron ring set in the open jaw of a cast-and-polished skull. The sound echoed beyond the carved blackwood door, which swung open on soundless hinges a few seconds later. 

“Who- oh, hey.” The son of Hades blinked in the morning sunlight, squinting at them from under a mop of messy, pitch-black hair. “What’s up?”

“We didn’t have a chance to talk last night,” Annabeth said. “Wanted to see how you were doing.”

Nico pushed the door open further, waving them inside. “Sure, come on in!” He sounded oddly enthusiastic, especially given that he’d been dead-tired not twelve hours before. Not that Percy minded. If Nico was happier, then that couldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe Will Solace just had that effect on people. 

The cabin was dark inside, obsidian-brick walls and purple-stained windows letting in just enough light to see by. Percy didn’t see a single lightbulb in the place, aside from the flashlight Nico (or had it been Will?) left on the nightstand. “Have a seat anywhere,” Nico said, voice ragged. 

“Feeling any better?” Percy asked. 

“Less tired. Shadow-travel always does that, but moving those two idiots made it _way_ harder.” He smirked. “But they did find that stupid apple, so now maybe Aphrodite won’t smite us all in our tracks.”

Annabeth looked skyward, probably listening for thunder. Nothing happened. She shrugged. “What was the story with the quest, anyway? Who would want to steal the Apple of Discord?”

“Far as we could tell, it was a few half-bloods.”

Percy’s eyebrows jumped. “Wait, not monsters?”

“Nope.” Nico shook his head. “Connor and Cecil tracked them all the way to Thunder Bay. Crossed the border in the Boundary Waters, then hoofed it to the city and caught them trying to hop a flight. 

“What then?”

“I showed up in time to help stop them from getting to the airport, but they disappeared into the city. So we tracked them down, since the tracker was still working, but about ten Laistrygonians found us all. Big scrap kicked off, and I had to summon about half a company of dead Canadian soldiers, but we got the apple. Left right as the second wave of giants got to us.”

“Shit. And no one got hurt?” 

“Couple close calls, but we’re all fine. Better off than the thieves, anyway.” 

“Any idea who they were?”

“They weren’t Americans, that’s all I know for sure. I’d bet on them being Sicilians, but gods only know.” He smirked. “They’re all dead anyway, so maybe my dad knows.”

Annabeth went a little pale, but didn’t flinch. She’d been bothered by mentions of the Underworld since leaving it, much as she managed to keep a brave face on. “Wonder what they wanted with it,” she said. 

“I asked one, after I cut his sword hand off. He said something about his boss needing it for a ritual, but that he didn’t know anything else.” He shrugged. “Then a dead Canadian bayoneted him.” 

“Now that _is_ weird,” she replied. Percy let her ask the questions. He wasn’t as good with myths as her, and she’d know more about this golden apple than he did. As it turned out, the only answers Nico had involved the fact that whoever stole the fruit had managed to find Aphrodite’s cabin despite the fact that it was protected as well as anything could be. The driveway looked abandoned to anyone who couldn’t see through the Mist, and Ares had laid a small minefield in the woods around it, set to go off if anything godly got near them. And, to add to the weirdness, the half-blood thieves had been armed with hunting rifles and celestial bronze-tipped ammunition to go with the usual assortment of swords and daggers. 

“Wait, they had guns?” Annabeth looked more than a little startled. “These guys weren’t kidding around.”

“That’s what Cecil said, but it isn’t unheard of. Hell, half the dead soldiers I call up have some kind of rifle. Got a platoon of German infantry from World War Two once, really made that hydra’s day when one of them _flammenwerfer’d_ its necks.” The son of Hades shook his head, suppressing a laugh. “But anyway. These guys were serious, and I honestly have no idea where they came from. Maybe Chiron knows, but I came back here and passed out right after he took the apple, so I’ll have to ask him later.”

The conversation went on for another half hour, before Nico stood up and told them he was off to meet Will in Boston, where his mom was playing a concert. Percy and Annabeth wished him well, then stepped back out into the light. Percy fumbled for his sunglasses, realizing too late that he probably should have put them on before opening the door. 

“Fuck! Nico, how do you not go blind every morning?” The son of Hades said nothing, but Percy swore he heard laughter as the door shut.

His parents met them at the base of Half-Blood Hill an hour later. They followed the same route back to the city that Argus had, when he drove them home that night barely a month before. The uncertainty Percy had felt then wasn’t gone, not really. But it was less overwhelming, less total, than it had been. He could turn in his seat and see Annabeth, nose in a book or staring out the window, and contrast that with how she’d sat curled against him, shaking and crying, when they last took this trip. The sight alone was enough to make him forget, if only for a moment, that he still couldn’t go more than a few nights without waking up in a cold sweat. He couldn’t shield her from the dreams, but he could keep the promise he’d made, and be there when she woke up. Come what may, that would have to be enough. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title felt relevant, and is also the title of a song off Northern Crown's latest album. Some proper-good doom metal that gets, shall we say, off in the weeds as far as style goes.


	6. The Hidden Folk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short one this time around. Updating every other week seems pretty realistic going forward.

Annabeth 3

Annabeth’s skull felt like it was about to start cracking in two. Not fully split, or pop out the stillborn brainchild her mother would’ve produced after an afternoon of increasingly pointless research, but tectonic fracture was a distinct possibility. She’d been hammering away since noon at a project she now very much regretted taking, and there was no end in sight. What was it with her and offering to help out with things she knew she didn’t have space in her head for? Designs for Olympus were one thing. She’d gladly set aside time to make progress on a temple, shrine, or garden. The same went for work on Camp buildings. But this? Anyone could do what she was doing, and she suspected that they’d be about as unsuccessful. 

She’d started off hopefully enough. Nico’s sudden arrival back at Camp with the Apple of Discord, and his story about the distinctly European half-bloods who’d tried to steal it, had sparked her curiosity enough to ask Chiron about whether there were demigods living in places other than the Americas. A foreign collection of half-bloods, or even a version of Camp that wasn’t in the US, seemed like a decent explanation for where the thieves had come from and how they’d gotten their mission. She imagined a European Oracle, speaking prophecies in German or Italian or French, to a bunch of teenagers living in the woods outside some big continental city. As soon as she’d asked, the old centaur had smiled sadly and taken a worn, beaten volume down from the shelf behind his desk.

According to Chiron, a child of Hermes by the name of Hal Mason had become interested in that very same question a century before. A sword instructor and right-hand man to Chiron, he’d been surprised by what seemed to be a sudden increase in the number of half-bloods of European origin who passed through Camp. Most of them were young adults, though their ages ranged from the young teens to the late seventies. They usually came on the advice of a satyr who worked on Ellis Island, and pointed confirmed half-bloods in the direction of safety. Over time, Hal had become convinced that Europe hosted an equivalent of Camp Half-Blood, because many of the demigods arriving from there had combat skills you just couldn’t learn in the wild. However, no one he interviewed ever gave up the camp’s location, or even admitted to its existence. The most he had been able to do was collect the life stories of their visitors in a loose series of notes, which later campers had collected into a typewritten volume handily entitled  _ Visitors to Camp Half-Blood. _ Entries were short, maybe a paragraph in length, and most of them detailed American half-bloods who came to Camp on their own, after they’d become too old to live there as campers. There was, however, the occasional European, and even a few people from further afield.

The book was less a coherent volume than a collection of a few hundred spiral-bound pages. Each one contained a short biography, about half of which were accompanied by a small sketch of the half-blood in question. Annabeth let out a long breath, rolling her eyes. Even categorizing the entries was proving to be an absolute pain in the rear. There were handwritten page numbers, but only for the first third of the book. Those pages also happened to be the oldest ones, and were starting to fall apart around the edges. The font changed depending on the page, and some idiot from the ‘60s had decided that all the sketches needed a half-assed colorization. Whichever children of Athena had decided to take Mason’s notes and organize them clearly hadn’t gotten the memo about not changing your stupid format halfway through your stupid book. She shrugged. This was  _ not  _ going to be fun.

“You OK?” Percy was staring at her from his desk chair, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yeah, but this book isn’t. I don’t know how anyone’s supposed to read more than a page before their head explodes!”

Percy stood, and crossed the room. He sat next to her on the bed, one arm around her shoulders. 

“Let’s go walking; we can grab gelato or something.”

“I can’t, Percy. I told Chiron I’d look at this, and I’ve finally got time.” She’d stayed up until well after midnight, finishing an AP Euro essay and a calculus problem set, then worked for most of the day on a set of drawings she had due for her drafting course. All so she’d be able to sit down this afternoon and read over this disorganized pile of crap. “Sorry, I just really have to do this.”

“Beth.” She turned, surprised at how serious he sounded. “When did you last eat?” 

The question caught her off-guard. “Um… breakfast, I think?” She’d wolfed down a bowl of Cheerios, then gone straight to work. She felt suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the pit in her stomach, which she’d managed to ignore for the last six hours.  _ Oog.  _ She’d completely forgotten lunch. 

“If you don’t want to come then that’s fine, but I’m buying you food. You need some.”

Annabeth shrugged, staring at the ceiling. He was right, of course. She hadn’t taken a break since she’d started, and her head was really starting to hurt. But she couldn’t quit on a project for Chiron, and this stupid book wasn’t going to be fast reading. It’d be worse, though, if she tried to push on with this damn headache.

“Gods, why are you always right about this stuff?” Sighing, she put the book aside, and swung off the bed. “Let me get my sunglasses, my head hurts and it’s bright out.”

“Perks of being a guy, I guess. All I think about is food and sports.” 

“You sure that’s all?”

“Well, there’s other stuff, but my folks are in the other room and you’ve been busy all day.”

“Hasn’t stopped you from staring.”

“Well, maybe you’re easy to stare at.”

She blushed. “You are a complete seaweed brain. Come on, let’s go!”

October in Manhattan made dressing for fall a gamble. With cold and snow still a month off, the weather fluctuated between August-hot and pleasantly cool. Today fit firmly in the former category, and Annabeth shed the jacket she’d brought along as soon as she walked out the building’s main door. 

“Fuck me, it’s hot!” Sweat was already starting to soak the back of her shirt. She’d stopped wearing collared shirts everywhere aside from school, having decided that not getting stared at by random strangers on the subway wasn’t worth the sweat.

“Good ice cream weather, at least.” Percy smirked beneath his aviators. He managed long sleeves just fine, even if he did pair them with golf shorts and the same battered sandals he’d had since right after his trip to Mount Tam. 

“How aren’t you dying out here?”

“I am, but sweat’s water. I just dry myself off.”

His hand brushed her back, and she cringed as her shirt made contact with bare skin, but it was already dry. “Ow- oh, thanks.”

Their usual gelato stop was crowded, and it took ten minutes of waiting in line to get two scoops of cold, lime-flavored goodness. Annabeth’s headache started to let up, thanks to the calories or the fact that she was out of the apartment for a change. If Percy hadn’t been there, she’d probably have kept working well past dinner, and then wondered why she was snapping at everyone. Her half-siblings almost all had the same problem, to the point that the Athena Cabin became a minefield after dark, when everyone stayed up past lights-out and worked away at whatever homework or projects they had. 

Cold snacks in hand, she and Percy headed into Central Park. The trails and meadows were swollen with New Yorkers enjoying what might be the last truly warm weekend until spring. It was so full that even finding a bench to sit on proved impossible, so they stuck to walking. The trees were turning orange and red and yellow, but other than that, today felt like June or July. She wished it were. At least then there wouldn’t be homework and Chiron’s side-project waiting for her in an hour.

“So,” Annabeth asked, wanting to get her mind off the work she’d have to head beck to at some point, “what’d you do this afternoon other than stare at my back?”

“Not much. Finally wrote that damn application essay.” Percy replied, spoon halfway to his mouth.

“For Enstone?” They’d agreed to at least apply to a few schools that weren’t New Rome, and Percy had suggested the little school on the Connecticut side of the Sound. Paul having gone there meant that Percy could get in relatively easily, and Annabeth’s research into the architecture program showed it to be promising. And, perhaps more importantly, not staffed by stuck-up Romans. 

“Yep. Paul said he’d take a look at it tonight, so I should be done applying by the end of the weekend.”

_ “ _ That’s great!” Annabeth had sent in her application a week ago, and now had only to finish the others she’d started. Which sounded easier than it actually would be, she knew, but the process was less dull than writing yet another response paper to yet another dead guy’s poem for her English course. Why Paul wasn’t the AP teacher she had no idea, but his assignments sounded way more exciting than the dross she had to turn in. “At least one of us got something done.”

“I wanted it finished before tonight, Yanks are playing and I can’t miss it.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Maybe I can get Chiron’s thing finished so I can watch.” The Yankees had made the playoffs, and were playing the Angels for the American League pennant. Tickets had sold out days before, so the only way to watch was from the Jacksons’ couch. At least the TV was big enough, and the signal good enough, to see what was happening.

They continued in that vein for a while, finally exiting the park at a different spot than normal and turning for home. The Guggenheim towered above them as they walked by, a line of museumgoers stretching out the doors and onto the sidewalk. Annabeth found herself gawking up at the looming concrete facade. Wright’s expanding-cylinder design was meant to resemble a nautilus shell, but to her the building’s most striking aspect was how different from his other work it was. Here was a man who spent his life building houses in the suburbs and the woods, working in stark lines and hard angles, coming to the city and creating something totally antithetical to its surroundings. The round tower, the sweeping curve of the monitor building, all of it so wonderfully different from the blocky towers that hemmed it in, drew her eye and held it like nothing short of Olympus itself.

“We should grab tickets one of these days.” She’d been wanting to visit since she learned that the place existed, but hadn’t had a chance. Hadn’t done more than seen it from afar or in a book, until now. 

“I went when I was in middle school, on a class trip.” Percy shrugged. “Neat place, but it all went way over my head.”

Annabeth stopped in her tracks, staring at him like he’d just told her the sky was orange. “You’ve been to the  _ Guggenheim _ and you didn’t tell me? C’mon, what was it like?” She knew she sounded about ten years old, and didn’t care. 

“I don’t remember much, other than really wanting to drop something over the railing to see what happened when it hit the ground. That, and the art gave me a headache.”

“Gods, you’re a philistine!”

“A what now?”

“A kelp-head.”

“Guilty as charged, babe.” Percy grinned, and squeezed her hand. “We can go visit if you want, though. See if my folks want to come tomorrow, even.”

“Well I’m sure they’ve been before, but it’d be fun if we all went.”

“Annabeth, my mom would probably take you to a Mets game if you asked, and that’s about on the level of the dump for places she doesn’t want to go.”

Annabeth knew that was true, of course. Sally Jackson had been a lot of things to her since that fateful trip to Westover Hall. She’d let her sleep on the couch when she visited the city even before she and Percy had started dating, and they’d become fast friends after the events of the previous summer. Last winter, they’d spent more than a few long Sunday nights watching Jets games, trying to keep their minds on literally anything but Percy’s disappearance. And now, with those events fresh in the past, Sally felt like more of a mom than her stepmother ever had, and as for Athena, well, how good a parent could any god be? 

They did eventually make it home, to Annabeth’s displeasure, since that meant she had to sit back down and make sense of the mess of collected biographies she’d promised to parse through.  _ Might as well start at the beginning,  _ she though, abandoning her efforts at searching for anyone whose name sounded foreign. Nico had said that the half-bloods he’d come across in Canada sounded Italian, but this book covered a time when many thousands of immigrants had come to America from all across the European continent, so most of the people she’d found had been Americans with Italian names. If she was going to find any evidence of a European home for half-bloods, she’d have to find a better way of finding Europeans. So she began on page one, as proclaimed by the number scrawled on the frayed paper’s bottom corner. As before, the vast majority of entries had nothing to do with Europe. But this time, as she read and reread the typewritten text, she discovered a pattern. Whoever had typed out these first few pages had a distinct style. Whenever they began telling different half-blood’s story, they followed a common format. Name, age, date of birth, location of birth. This information was never listed out, but it always appeared in the first few sentences of an entry. Annabeth began skipping any entry that didn’t include some European location in the first line or so.

Two hours in, Annabeth felt that morning’s frustration bubbling back up. Her new method was great at finding European half-bloods, but those people had almost nothing in common. None of them had anything in their entries that mentioned attending a common camp, or school, or anything else specific enough to make sense as a location for-  _ Wait. What in Hades?  _ She froze, page held half-turned in her hand. Scanned the last entry on the page again.  _ Uhlrich Tannenbrücke. Son of Apollo. Born 1907, died 1980. Spent time in Vienna, Sicily, and...  _

_ “ _ Percy?”

“Hm?” He looked up from his work, startled. 

“Where, exactly, did Nico say that half-blood who stole the Apple of Discord was from?”

“Oh, um, Sicily, I think? Wherever they make that really good pizza. You know, thick crust, lots of sauce?” 

_ How had she forgotten that?  _ It didn’t matter now, but the mental omission still bothered her. How much time could she have saved by remembering what Nico actually said, and not what she assumed him to mean?  _ Stupid!  _ She reached for her notepad. Scribbling down the Austrian’s name, she turned back a few pages. There it was again. Don Ornaghi. Son of Athena. Born 1899. Emigrated from Sicily to New York in 1950. And again, with Elena Balducci, daughter of Demeter, born in Tuscany and worked in, where else, Sicily! After another hour of searching, Annabeth set her pencil down. There were, in all, twenty-seven demigods of European origin listed in the first third of the book. Of those, nineteen had been in Sicily at one point or another. Why hadn’t anyone spotted that before? 

Annabeth glanced out the window. The sun was low, but not low enough to be obscured by buildings _.  _ She dug in her bookbag for a drachma, and, finding one, shot to her feet. “Hey, make me a rainbow, would you?” 

“Sure, but what’s going on?” Percy had probably been watching her and wondering if she’d gone crazy for the last hour, but he stood up anyway.

“I found something I need to tell Chiron about. I’ll explain then!” 

Still looking a little surprised, Percy set his notebook down and went to grab a glass of water from the kitchen. Thirty seconds later, he returned, closing the door and switching the lights off. Annabeth opened the blinds enough to let a thin ray of sun into the darkened room, and sat well to the side. “Ready?” Percy asked, setting the glass on the floor. 

Annabeth made sure her note were arranged, and held the drachma in her palm. “Go ahead.” Percy waved a lazy hand, and a column of droplets leaped into the still air. The sun caught them and formed a rainbow, glowing in the dark. Calling on Iris, Annabeth flipped the coin into the light, and, within a few seconds, Chiron’s office appeared. He looked up, surprised, and set his pen down. 

“Annabeth? Is everything alright?

“Better than that, Chiron. Remember that book I borrowed when Percy and I last visited?”

The centaur nodded. “The collection of biographies that Hermes’ cabin once kept. I do.”

“I figured out where the European version of Camp is.”

Chiron blinked, then leaned forward in his wheelchair. “Have you, now? Do tell.” 

“It’s in Sicily. Same place the half-bloods who stole the Apple of Discord came from.”

“And how did you come to that conclusion?” Chiron shook his head, slowly and contemplatively. “I’ve read through that book many a time, but it’s simply too dense. So many demigods, and so much information.”

Annabeth couldn’t help herself. She grinned, and pointed to her notes. “I looked at all the half-bloods who came to Camp after living in Europe. At first I didn’t get anywhere.”

“That’s as far as I, or anyone else, ever took the project. We’d hoped to get one of them to simply admit to us where their gathering place was, but we never had any luck.”

“They did admit it, though, just not directly.” Annabeth held the book up, struggling to balance it until Percy came over and lent a hand. “Can you see this?”

Leaning forward even more, Chiron squinted through his reading glasses. “Well enough.”

“Read this one. The one about Ulrich, who grew up in Austria, but spent time in Sicily.” She turned a few pages, to another she’d marked. “And here. Antonio de Malo. Same deal, born in Genoa and lived near Palermo for a year.” She set the book down. “I found twenty-seven half-bloods from Europe, and nineteen were in Sicily at one point or another. Most of them near Palermo. And that’s just in the first part of the book!”

Chiron’s brows knitted together. He sat back, staring at his office ceiling. “Annabeth Chase, you may have just solved a problem that I’ve had in the back of my mind for the last century.”

She felt her face flushing red. “I can’t have been the first, though! It all made sense once Percy reminded me where the thieves came from, and I realized that Sicily had been mentioned so many times in the book.”

“You’re the first person to sit down with that book since well before you were born. Everyone else who asked to have a look either gave up once they realized how slipshod it was, or needed it for something that had nothing to do with European half-bloods.” Chiron’s lip twitched into a half-smile. “Besides, sometimes all a problem needs is for someone new to take a look at it." 

“Well then we’ve got to check it out, see if there’s anyone actually there!” Annabeth wasn’t exactly looking forward to another trip overseas, not after the last time she’d been to Europe, but this wasn’t a discovery you could just let sit.

The old centaur held up a hand. “And we will. But you’ve got enough to worry about with school going on, and unless you’ve learned Italian in the last few weeks, then I doubt you’ll make it far in Sicily.”

“So, ‘bon-jerno’ won’t cut it?” Percy asked.

“Afraid not, my boy. And your Brad Pitt could use some work, if I might say so. But regardless. I’ll speak with Nico about having a look around over there. He knows the language, and can get overseas far faster than any of us.” He wheeled his chair back. “Thank you, Annabeth. I ought to go speak to Nico about this, but you’ve been of great help.”

“Just make sure he doesn’t do anything rash,” She objected, raising a hand. 

“I’ll send someone experienced with him, don’t you worry. Perhaps Jason Grace, once he finds his way back here. Thank you again!”

With that, Chiron swiped an arm through the mist, cutting the connection.

Percy stared into the space where the apparition had been. “When did Chiron watch  _ Inglorious Basterds? _ ”

“Beats me.” The movie had just come out, and she and Percy had gone to see it the previous weekend. “He’s right, though. All I can speak is a little Latin, no way could I get along in Italy.” Annabeth yawned, stretching her arms above her head. She was hungry again, which made sense. The sun was low, casting orange lines on the wall. “I could sure get along with some food, though.“

Dinner proved to be agreeable. Saturdays were reserved for Sally’s excellent cooking, which tonight took the form of wienerschnitzel, roasted asparagus, and mashed potatoes. Two months before, a meal this rich would have ended with Annabeth trying to keep her hair out of the toilet after her stomach rejected the food. Now, she gladly took seconds of potatoes when Sally offered. At this rate, she’d actually have to start exercising. Not that she minded. Jogging in Central Park sounded way nicer than the PE class she’d managed to avoid taking.

“How was the park?” Sally asked. She and Paul had been in the kitchen for most of the afternoon.

“Good! We walked by the Guggenheim, which your  _ son _ ,” Annabeth said pointedly, “never told me he visited.”

“Oh, yes, I almost forgot about that! He was there in middle school, the same year he first went to Camp.”

“Actually, we were going to go back tomorrow, since Annabeth’s never been. You and Paul can come too, of course.”

“If you two want to make a date of it, that’s fine.” Sally was positively beaming. “We’ve both been.”

“Annabeth?” Percy glanced her way. 

She wasn’t sure how best to explain that not even an afternoon with Percy would be as good as an afternoon with a family that didn’t think she was crazy or about to get them all killed, so she settled for inviting Sally and Paul to join them. They said they would, of course, and the conversation moved on. Dessert was offered and accepted, even though Annabeth felt way too full to eat much more than a small portion of tiramisu. But she did, because she’d seldom had the chance before now. After a while, everyone migrated into the living room to watch the Yankees play. Annabeth already felt sluggish from dinner, but, for once, she didn’t mind. There was nothing she really needed to be awake for until Monday, and she certainly wouldn’t be pulling midnight watch duty anytime soon. The knowledge that she could fall asleep and wake up whenever she felt like it was oddly comforting, especially when contrasted with the three-hours-a-night schedule she and Percy had been forced to keep for most of the summer. 

She had no idea when she drifted off, but she woke up in Percy’s bed, his arm draped protectively over her. Sunlight glanced through the blinds, painting white streaks on the far wall. She hadn’t dreamed at all, for the first time in at least a year. No forced recollections of Luke, or the Sea of Monsters, or Tartarus. The restlessness she usually felt upon awakening, the need to get up and go do something to clear her head, was gone. So she lay there, hemmed in by Percy’s warmth, luxuriating in the utter lack of things to worry about. Those would creep in eventually, which made this moment all the more worth savoring. After all, she could worry about that English test on Monday, even though it was going to be hard enough without the extra studying she should’ve been doing-

_ Stop.  _ Annabeth bit the inside of her cheek, bringing the conscious part of her mind back in line with where she was. If her trip down to Greek Hell had a silver lining, it was that she was finally getting good at kicking herself out of her own head. You had to be, when getting distracted more than likely meant getting killed. Getting mentally lost was still easy to do, of course, but staying that way wasn’t much of a problem anymore. On reflection, though, could she really give Tartarus any credit? The first six weeks after coming back through the Doors of Death had been a slog through nightmares and cold sweats, and she’d spent more time staring at the the apartment ceiling trying to do anything but sleep than she cared to admit. But those long nights had given her plenty of practice at clamping down on her brain before it could run away from her. And there were still plenty of long sleepless nights. Those would probably never disappear. How could they, when she’d spent the last decade bouncing between near-death experiences? But they weren’t getting  _ more _ frequent, so that was something. And when they happened, she could roll over and find Percy there, right where he belonged. If that wasn’t the best way to drive bad dreams out, then she didn’t know what was. 

  
  



	7. Grey Skies Fallen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The anniversary of Percy disappearing to California is a pretty important event, so it warrants a chapter for itself. Other things happen as well. After this, things open up in terms of what can be done plot-wise. I expect to get to the beginning of summer pretty fast, and from there just about anything is possible.

**Grey Skies Fallen**

Percy 4

December in New York had never been what Percy considered a good time. It wasn’t that he didn’t like cold weather. Snow really changed how the city felt. It quieted traffic, leaving the roads and sidewalks a little less congested. It meant coffee and hot chocolate all day if he wanted, and, now that he and Annabeth were living together, cuddling by the window and watching the city go by. She’d even discovered a penchant for tight-fitting wool sweaters and yoga pants, which she insisted were useful because they didn’t get in the way of sudden movement in the event of a monster attack, but Percy suspected that she knew exactly what wearing the things did to him. The problem was that December also meant winter finals, and the endless studying they demanded. He lived with a trio of academics, so what should’ve been an easy Saturday inevitably became an extended review session. Not for Annabeth, of course, because she finished all her work early. Instead of reading  _ The Iliad  _ like Percy had to do, she got press-ganged into cooking. That was probably for the best, since Percy was a certified danger around stoves. At least it was lunchtime. He could avoid writing about Troy for another hour or two.

Annabeth and his mom decided to spend the day baking, and, with Paul off at a weekend teaching seminar in Syracuse, Percy had things largely to himself. He’d offered to help in the kitchen, if only to avoid essay-writing and to get his mind off the week ahead, but the room barely had space for two. He had secretly been just fine with heading outside, since it meant he wouldn’t have to find an excuse to slip away for lunch. He was meeting Jake Mason, a former head counselor who’d agreed to grab a burger and Coke in the city, and he didn’t want to be late. Sons of Hephaestus generally fell into two molds: the fastidious engineering-designer types, and the anything-and-everything-at-once Leo Valdezes of the world. Jake fit firmly into the first mold. He was also one of the best blacksmiths the Hephaestus cabin had to offer. 

They’d agreed to meet at a hole-in-the-wall burger joint on the Upper East Side. Gandolfino’s had been open and thriving since Percy was in kindergarten, and he and his mom had come around for a burger and some of the excellent steak fries at least once a month for as long as he could remember. Today, though, there was more on his mind than good ground beef. 

“Percy. Good to see you!” Jake stood as Percy ducked through the door, stomping the snow from his boots. Like most of Hephaestus’ sons, he was powerfully built, though last year’s incident with Festus had left him with a leg that still wobbled when he put weight on it.

“Jake! How’s it going?” Percy sat across from him. 

“Not bad at all. School’s boring me to tears, but they let me use the machine shop so it’s not all bad.” He sipped on a bottle of Coke, and waved to a passing waiter. They both ordered the bacon burger, Jake opting for mashed potatoes on the side. “How about yourself?” He asked once the waiter had gone.

“Could be worse. School is pretty decent when Annabeth is looking over my shoulder, and the break from almost getting killed all the time is nice.” 

“I feel you. Been nice to have something to do besides hammer out swords, now that football season’s back on. Still manage to get to Camp sometimes, though, and we’ve got most of the cabins rebuilt to Annabeth’s designs.”

Percy grinned. Annabeth had been really proud of her design for the Athena cabin, which had taken a rather large boulder to the facade, as she’d called it. Her work on Olympus had been interrupted by last summer’s events, and she had only just started work on the godly mountain now that her Camp designs were done. “She’ll be glad to hear that.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t come. Was kinda looking forward to seeing her, actually.”

“We’ll be at Camp for New Year’s. I actually came alone for a reason.”

“What’s that?”

“I need a gift for her, and I want it to be something she’ll really like. Decided to replace her old dagger she lost in Tartarus, and I figured I’d ask if you could help.”

Jake grinned. ”You’ve got the guy for the job. I’ve been looking for a project to get my mind off building cabins, and knives are more fun to work on than swords.”

Their food arrived, steaming hot and smelling like a baseball game. Jake took a massive bite out of his burger, toweling juice from his chin as he set it down. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Percy hasn’t been here since his parents took him and Annabeth out for dinner following the first day of school, and he’d been missing out. 

“So,” Jake asked between bites of burger. “You and Annabeth still going to New Rome?”

“No., unless we don’t get in anywhere else.” Percy shook his head. “Decided we didn’t want to move across the country.” He wasn’t lying. Not really. He still really liked the idea of not looking over his shoulder for monsters once a minute, but seeing the University of New Rome up close had been, frankly, a little unsettling. The way they  _ ranked  _ everything, categorized people into neat little groups and made them all fit together without considering what anyone actually wanted, didn’t make him look forward to spending four years there. Besides, Annabeth had been miserable the whole time they were on campus. He couldn’t ask her to hate where she went to school. She’d follow wherever he went, which scared him a little, since she was the one with the academic future ahead of her, and he’d feel terrible if he ruined that. So they’d sat down a few weeks after their visit to the Guggenheim, once all their college applications were sent off, and talked about where they’d go once they heard back from the schools that let them in. They’d both wanted to stay near Camp, near his parents.  _ And away from hers, _ he reminded himself. He’d argued that New Rome was a decent fallback if they couldn’t agree on, or get into, anything else, and she’d agreed. Even so, what they both really wanted to do was move an hour north to the other side of the Sound to Enstone, Paul’s old college. To neither of their surprise, going different places was mutually ruled out of the question. Percy would’ve given the opposite advice to any of his friends who wanted to follow their high-school significant other to college, but he’d also bet good money that no one he knew had literally given up on godhood for their girlfriend. Doing that, then falling with someone off the world’s tallest cliff after they risked their life to find you, taught you a lot about them. Besides, Enstone seemed really nice, and wasn’t picky about whether or not ex-praetors hung out with the plebeians. “We’re probably going to Enstone, up across the Sound. Assuming we both get in. Architecture program’s better there anyway.”

“Oh, good! You’ll be close to Boston.”

“What’s in Boston?”

“Me, as of next fall.” Jake grinned. “Gonna do mechanical engineering at MIT.”

“Dude, that’s beyond cool!” Percy reaches across the table, slapping his friend on the shoulder. They talked college for a few minutes more before moving on to football, arguing over whether New England could pull off a win over Carolina that weekend. 

“So, what exactly do you want this dagger to look like?” They’d agreed that yes, the Patriots probably could beat the Panthers, and ordered sundaes once their burgers were gone. Jake produced a notebook and what looked like the world’s most expensive mechanical pencil.

Percy blanked. He knew what Annabeth’s old knife looked like, of course, but describing it proved harder than remembering it. “Um… a knife, I guess. Double-edged, pretty stubby blade for its length. Might’ve been a foot long, if you count the handle.” He stared at the ceiling, trying to remember anything else about it. He’d never been good with anything shorter than a sword, and had only ever held Annabeth’s knife a few times. “Oh, it didn’t have a crossguard.”

Jake shook his head. “Sounds like a pretty generic knife if you ask me. You remember what the handle was made of?”

“Shit… might have been wrapped in leather, but who knows? Can’t really ask her or I’ll give away the surprise.”

“I’ll figure something out, don’t worry.” He glanced down at his notepad, where his hand was scribbling out a drawing as if it had a mind of its own. “Probably something like this, unless you don’t like the look.” He slid the pad across the table. The drawing, which looked like it had taken a lot longer than the few minutes Jake had spent on it, was of a sleek fighting knife. It resembled something out of an old spy movie more than an Ancient Greek weapon. The blade, which written dimensions marked as being seven and a half inches long, tapered from a simple crossguard to a slender, stiletto-like point. The handle was ribbed, swollen to fit the palm, and capped with a half-circular pommel. This was an assassin’s weapon, something for getting between ribs and slitting arteries. Perfect for Annabeth, who, Yankees cap or not, liked to fight from well inside the reach of a spear or sword. Percy found himself nodding. 

“Yeah, this’ll be really nice. She gets in close when she fights, so you can’t hit her with a sword, and this’ll let her be precise.” He handed the notepad back, and took a bite of ice cream.

“OK, this’ll be simple, I think. Leather won’t work for the handle, so I’ll probably use hardwood.” He wrote something in the margins, and shut the pad. They talked about school, sports, and anything else that came to mind for another half hour, before paying their checks and heading out onto the street. “I’d prefer to just give you the dagger once I’m done so it doesn’t get lost in the mail. Meet me here in, oh, a week? 

“Sure, I can probably swing it. I’ll IM you if not. Good to see you, man!” With that, Percy turned and headed for the subway. The wind was up, and he didn’t want his face to freeze before he made it home.

Sunday was not fun. Percy had done his best to forget that the anniversary of his unwilling teleportation to the West Coast was coming up, but, just like everything else unpleasant, it stuck in his mind. It really didn’t help that Annabeth got progressively more anxious as the fourteenth of December approached. She wouldn’t let go of him. He’d have been stupid to complain, since she was sticking even closer than usual and he really liked being near her, but watching her eyes get big and afraid-looking when he left the couch to go to the bathroom hurt. She’d done the same thing for the first few weeks after they came back from Camp that August. Not that he could blame her, but still. She shouldn’t have had to be this afraid. He wasn’t going anywhere, unless Hera really,  _ really  _ had it in for him. But he couldn’t worry about that. If five years of dealing with the Olympians had taught him anything, it was that they were as changeable and unpredictable as the sea. Worrying about what they’d do was a sure way to go crazy, so, after he’d gotten his memory back and realized what had happened, he made a point of not thinking about just how badly any of them could ruin his life. Besides, thinking about angry deities when he had finals to study for made him work even slower. 

The anniversary of Percy’s disappearance was cold, grey, and about as exciting as a history test. He had one of those, too, a final exam that was, in the teacher’s words, “as cumulative as I could make it.” Which meant that, instead of only having to remember what happened after World War One and before World War Two, he had to dig up his old notes from early in the semester and study everything from the unification of Germany to the Boer War. It was even pretty interesting, once he decoded his own chicken-scratch handwriting, but regurgitating all that info when he had the events of a year before stuck in his head wasn’t easy. He walked out of the classroom expecting about a C on the test, and hoping that Annabeth had fared better with her finals. She’d been on edge about today for the past week, and the way she held his hand as they sat at a table in the library to wait for Paul to pick them up said that was still the case

“So,” he asked, “your finals go any better than mine?” It was a lame attempt at conversation, but maybe he could get her mind off of last year and onto anything else. 

“Not too bad, honestly. Drafting was fine, but I can do that in my sleep.” She shrugged and half-smiled, the closest she’d come to looking happy all day. “And I don’t think I fucked myself out of an A in my AP Lit course. What about you?”

Percy leaned back in his chair, groaning. “Well I’ll have a B in the class, unless I was totally wrong on the essay. Would’ve done better if the test wasn’t over the whole semester.”

“That’s great!” Annabeth’s eyes lit up, but went dull again once she looked back down at the table. She’d laid out her notes for her finals the next day. “At least the hard stuff’s all due on Thursday.”

“You worried?”

“No.” She grimaced, her lip twitching while she looked off to the side. 

“Annabeth, I can tell something’s bothering you.” 

“Ok, yeah. I’m worried, but I can’t think about that right now, alright? If I do I’ll be useless at studying and I can’t have that happen.” She shook her head, and a lock of hair came loose from her ponytail. “Sorry, didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s alright, babe. Hell, all this is my fault anyway.”

Her eyes flashed, lighting blazing across a stormy sky. “Don’t say that, Percy. It’s not true.” She glanced around, as if she wanted to make sure no one had heard. “Here, come on. Is the pool still open? I want to study in the bleachers.”

Swim season had finished up the week before, but the pool stayed open for public use. The place was almost empty, and Annabeth visibly relaxed as soon as they sat down in the audience section overlooking the diving boards. She always came to watch the team practice, and maybe she’d gotten used to studying here. It was quiet, now that the pool was unused, and the silence made work easier. Of  _ course  _ Percy’s pre-calculus final was the next day, because apparently Hera wanted him to fail his math class on top of the perpetual anxiety. Well, in fairness, she’d probably expected him to be dead by now, so could he really blame her for the timing? 

His mom made blue cookies when he, Annabeth, and Paul got home. The sheer normalcy of sitting down at the table and eating something so familiar let him forget, if only for a minute, that he’d very nearly been separated forever from the girl who sat across from him, sipping on a Coke and looking like she thought the ground was about to fall out from under her chair. It was another thought that didn’t bear dwelling upon. So he tried to focus on the problem set he was working on.

That night went as badly as he could have expected a night to go. Annabeth looked dead tired as soon as she came out of the shower, and his studying dragged on without much progress. By the time they made it to bed, she was clinging to him like she hadn’t since the  _ Argo II,  _ on the way to New York. He held her right back. It was the right thing to do, and the feeling of her against him was the best thing he could have asked for. Well, maybe the second best, but the walls were thin, and they’d agreed not to do anything until time wasn’t a factor. 

“You going to be able to sleep?” He asked, once the lights were out and they were under the covers.

Annabeth’s voice was muffled by his shirt. “Yeah, I think so. I’ve been up the last three nights thinking about today, so I don’t feel like I can stay awake much longer.”

“Well, after tonight I’ll be less on edge.” He let out a long breath. “I shouldn’t be bothered, but it’s weird to think about.”

She nodded. “If I’m honest, I’m still worried. I know I can’t be, or I’ll go crazy, but still.” 

“I’d be amazed if you weren’t. I would be, if you’d disappeared.” He’d thought long and hard about what he would’ve done if Annabeth had been the one who vanished, and he’d concluded that he’d have reacted far worse than she did when he popped off to California. She’d kept her head, and gone about finding him the way a rational person would. He’d have rushed to the gates of Olympus with a sword in his hand. Probably died in the attempt. And Annabeth would’ve been a Roman forever. He pulled her closer, her chest against his. 

“I don’t think I’ll be sleeping much tonight.”

Annabeth shifted, looking up at him. “Just don’t get up and not tell me.”

“I’ll wake you up if I wake up, that alright?”

“Can you?”

“Of course.” He kissed her forehead, before she burrowed back into the space between his neck and shoulder. 

Neither of them spoke for a while. Eventually, Annabeth yawned, and rolled

over to her other side. “I love you, Percy,” she said, sleep heavy in her voice.

“Love you too, Beth.” He slipped a hand around her, pressing himself into her back. She was asleep by the time he got comfortable. 

His eyes shot open a moment later, propelled like a rifle round by about the hundredth Tartarus dream he’d had since leaving the place. Annabeth was snoring next to him, looking as peaceful as she’d done since they returned from their involuntary vacation in Greek Hell. He didn’t want to wake her up, but he had promised to do just that. 

“Beth?” He shook her shoulder. 

She rolled over. “Hmm?”

“I’ve got to get up. Sorry, had a nightmare.”

“Hmm... okay,” she slurred, blinking in the half-dark. “Just come back.”

“I’ll be back in an hour. I love you, babe.” He rolled out of bed, grabbing a set of running shorts so he wouldn’t be sitting on the couch in his boxers. Once he reached the living room, he sat on the couch and laid his head back on the cushion. The light from outside cast itself on the ceiling in multicolored swathes. They flashed and undulated, sometimes in sync with the city’s noise, sometimes in opposition. They were kind of beautiful, like some weird urban  _ aurora borealis _ . He checked the stove clock. 3:30 in the morning. That was a relief of sorts. It meant he’d probably get more sleep overall than had he woken up earlier, since there was less chance of a second dream. The problem was that, if he didn’t get back to bed, he’d be up longer before his finals. It’d probably take another hour to get back to sleep, and then he’d get maybe an hour and a half before it was time to wake up again. It might actually be worth studying until breakfast. “Ah, fuck it.” He sighed, and stood up. His legs ached. How long had he been sitting there? His books were in the bedroom, so he’d have to-  _ wait, shit.  _ If he were up all night studying, then Annabeth might wake up and think he was gone again. She’d find him soon enough, of course, but the last time he left her alone and she woke up, she’d broken down pretty badly. She definitely didn’t need another sleepless night. Especially now. He’d probably get a C on the rest of his finals no matter what he did. If he didn’t know the material now, he wouldn’t after a few hours of early-morning work. So he went to the restroom, dumped a palmful of water over his head, and laid down in bed. Annabeth rolled over when he did, blindly searching for him with one hand. He put an arm around her, letting her get snug next to him. He lay awake for an hour, staring across the room, but did eventually drop off. 

To both his and Annabeth’s surprise, things ran uphill for the rest of the week. Once Monday passed, they were left tired but free from the past week’s anxiety. Percy did indeed end up with a C on his pre-calc final, but it wasn’t enough to drop his grade below an 80. The relief he felt as he picked up his graded answer sheet from the front of the classroom was tempered by the knowledge that he’d have to do it all again the next day, in his geography and English courses, but those ended up going not-so-badly as well.  _ The Iliad  _ had been an easy read thanks to the fact that he’d been learning about the Trojan War through campfire stories and Chiron’s history lessons since he was twelve. That made his English test easy. Besides, having Annabeth around to cajole him into actually doing his homework had done some small wonders for his grades. He’d begun to pick up on that fact after he failed to fail a single test so far this semester, when he usually bombed at least one. Annabeth managed to get out of Thursday without anything below a B-minus in her philosophy course, which she wasn’t happy with, but grudgingly accepted when Percy pointed out that writing papers on three hours of sleep was neither easy nor fair, given their situation. 

As with everything else, having Annabeth around made the holidays just a little bit better. She’d had to jet off to California the year before to see family, promising to spend Christmas in New York. She’d done that, despite Percy’s absence, so this winter break would be their first together. After the really shitty past few weeks they’d both had, the time off felt more necessary than usual. Annabeth seemed really eager to help his mom with everything from cooking to decorating, so Percy stayed out of the way unless he was needed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help. But, they all agreed after he burnt his morning toast for the second time in as many days, they would rather eat ham that wasn’t charred. Jason and Piper certainly wouldn’t want burnt potatoes when they came around for Christmas dinner. Percy was looking forward to seeing them, both because he hadn’t done so since summer and because Jason had spent some time in Sicily, seeking out the half-blood enclave that Annabeth had discovered. Chiron was being tight-lipped about the whole thing, presumably because he didn’t want any of what Jason and Nico found to get out and become part of Camp’s churning rumor mill.

Percy sat in his room, twirling the knife he’d just picked up from Jake Mason in his fingers. He’d picked the weapon up over lunch, then walked home and kept it hidden in his jacket until Annabeth and his mom left to do their Christmas shopping. Now was his chance to check it out before he gave it to her. It’d cost him his entire stash of drachmas, plus lunch, but the results were worth it. Jake’s drawing hadn’t done his work justice. The balance was perfect, though Percy’s hand was a little big for the handle. Jake said he’d made the ribbed walnut handle a little smaller than normal, and the result seemed just about right. He wouldn’t know until Annabeth got the knife in her hands, of course, but Jake had promised to resize the handle if need be. The blade was seven and a half inches of finely-honed celestial bronze. Jake had covered it, the crossguard, and pommel in a matte-black coating that absorbed light, then sharpened the edges. This way, it’d still be lethal without the flashiness of a normal bronze blade. Perfect for Annabeth, who was better at sneaking around than anyone he knew. He sheathed the blade, and set it back in the box Jake had packaged it in. That went on the bed. He could hide it when he heard the apartment door open, since it always squeaked on its hinges. For now, all he wanted to do was mess around on the Minecraft server one of his swim teammates ran.

Halfway through finishing his poor imitation of a Roman coliseum, Percy heard his bedroom door open.  _ Oh, shit. _ He’d completely missed hearing Annabeth come in. 

“Hey!” She greeted him, sitting down on the bed. 

“Oh, hi, sorry,“ Percy reached for the box with the knife in it, hoping he could convince her it was a gift for his mom or something. “Let me just move this.”

She sat down, taking the box in both hands. “What is it?” 

“It’s, um…”  _ Fuck!  _ “It’s a gift for my mom!”

“Just figure that out now?” She smirked. 

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be a surprise, so…” He held a hand out.

“Percy, we went shopping for your mom’s gifts last week; they’re hidden in the closet. Now c’mon, spill. What’d you get me?”

He felt his entire face and chest flush red. “How’d you know?”

Annabeth pulled him onto the bed. “Because, Seaweed Brain, I can read you like a picture book.”

“I make it that easy?”

She grabbed the back of his head, pulling him in for a kiss. “You bet. Now let’s see…” Her fingers worked on the package, opening one end and sliding the knife out. Her eyes widened. “Oh, wow, this is something,” she said as she unsheathed the dagger, holding it up to inspect. Its edge caught the light, glowing golden-bronze against the black blade. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Damn, Percy, where’d you get this?”

“Jake Mason made it. We met up while you and Mom were out. Figured you lost your old knife so you might want a new one.”

“I’ll have to thank him too. This is… I don’t know what else to say, it’s perfect!” She set the bare blade on Percy’s desk, and wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks,” she said, right in his ear. The sensation sent a shiver through him. Suddenly, she was on top of him, pinning him to the bed. “You like how that feels?” Her voice was a ragged whisper, and the shivers came back.

“Yeah-“

She kissed him again, harder this time, making a noise in her throat that he’d never heard before while her hand slipped under his shirt. Her hair was messed up, and she stared at him, mouth half-open and eyes on fire.  _ My gods, the way she’s looking at me-  _ She froze, and glanced towards the door. Someone was out there. Three knocks, not loud ones, but they hammered like drums between Percy’s ears. 

“Hey, there’s some cookie dough out in the kitchen if you want some!” His mom said through the door.

“OK, Sally, be right there!” Annabeth replied, frantically running her hands through her hair. “Shit, what timing!” She said under her breath, adjusting her sweater. “See what I mean?”

“About wanting to have all the time we want? Yeah, and now I can’t wait.”

“Not sure we’ve got a choice, unless you parents run off on vacation and leave us here.” She shrugged. “But cookie dough does sound good. Coming?” She found her feet, holding out a hand. 

Making sure he didn’t look too disheveled, Percy let her pull him to his feet. For once, he’d have been just fine with not eating cookies, but there wasn’t anything to do other than wait.  _ Damn! _

  
  



	8. Afterglow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. I’m away from home for the holiday and ended up writing about to a third of this on my smartphone, so please bear with any formatting errors. The timing of this chapter is totally coincidental, but it’ll be the last one released in 2020. Thanks for reading, enjoy the holidays, and expect much more in the new year.

Annabeth 4

Annabeth was not used to this much attention. In fact, the holidays were usually a time when she took pains to make herself scarce. When she’d lived with her father, Christmas always meant a pair of rampaging stepbrothers interrupting her reading, and Helen pretending she didn’t exist. Later, at Camp, things had been a little better, but the place was usually near-empty thanks to the fact that almost everyone left during the school year. She’d spent last year’s Christmas here, with Sally and Paul, but she wanted nothing more than to forget that the time between last December and August had ever happened. As a result, now was the first time she was actually looking forward to the end of the year. She had to admit, hiding in her bedroom was a lot less fun than sitting around the table and enjoying home-cooked risotto or pulling the ersatz tree out of the closet and setting it up on the end table. But, while she wasn’t complaining, the utter lack of strife seemed to put her on edge. There was no wondering whether or not her dad wanted her around. No worries about monsters, or Luke, or Thalia, who was probably off in New Zealand hunting stag. The most pressing issue Annabeth had on her mind at the moment was whether she wanted to sleep in or get out of bed, and the absence of pressure was starting to get to her. Even finals week had been something for her to latch onto and worry about, thus making it harder to fall into a rut of obsessing over Tartarus and the other events of the last year. 

Percy wasn’t much help, unfortunately. He loved having nothing to do. They’d spent plenty of time together since school got out, of course, and she’d enjoyed all of it, but sitting on the couch reading a book or watching the Rangers game didn’t always give her much to focus on. And so, on the morning of the 24th, she found herself kissing him on the cheek as she got out of bed well before noon, to find Sally in the kitchen preparing brunch. She jumped as Annabeth shuffled in and grabbed a coffee mug, clearly not expecting company. 

“Oh, you’re up early!” She turned, looking a little concerned. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah. Just looking for something to do, really.”

“Well, if you want to start shredding potatoes, I was going to make hash browns.”

Glad for the distraction, Annabeth grabbed a paring knife. She’d learned to peel potatoes with her old dagger, so having a thin blade and a sharp, undented edge had been a novelty the first time she helped in the kitchen. She drank coffee as she worked, thankful that Sally had made a whole pot. The peeling and shredding wasn’t at all difficult, but she’d cut herself if she didn’t pay attention, and the mental effort was just enough to keep her from ruminating over how she could’ve avoided the whole trip to Greek Hell and back if she hadn’t been such an arrogant ass when she beat Arachne the first time. So she kept on peeling and shredding, until a mass of what would soon be hash browns sat piled in a big ceramic bowl. Annabeth filled the bowl with cold water, to draw the starch out of the potatoes, and set it by the sink. The kitchen went quiet.

“So,” Annabeth asked, “do you guys always have brunch the day before Christmas?” It was an inane question, but it filled the silence.

“Yep, ever since Gabe… left, it’s been kind of a tradition.” Annabeth had been to see the statue of Percy’s former stepdad at its home in the American Folk Art Museum. She’d seen Medusa’s handiwork before, of course, but the fat man’s ugly jowls and shapeless mass made her glad she’d never been one for sitting around. Percy’s description of the man as a “human walrus” was pretty accurate. “He’d be petrified to know I was making this stuff; he always hated corn beef hash.”

“You are completely incorrigible!” Sally and Annabeth both turned to see Paul in the doorway. “They’d stone you for a pun like that back in ancient times.” 

“Well then they’d have no taste at all,” Sally replied, leaning over and kissing Paul on the cheek. 

He entered the kitchen, grabbing his own coffee mug while Annabeth and Sally went back to cooking. “Anything I can help with?” He asked.

“If you want to start the dough for the cinnamon rolls, you and Annabeth can get going on that.” Sally pointed to the top shelf. “Flour’s up there.” 

Annabeth had eaten cinnamon rolls before, but she’d never made them herself. It was more involved than she expected. The enriched dough they needed took more than just mixing flour and water together, but Paul seemed to know what he was doing, so she followed his lead. They worked in silence for a few minutes, Annabeth stirring while Paul measured ingredients, before Paul said something she hadn’t expected.

“I was talking to my friend up at Enstone.” He paused, sampling the raw dough and nodding. “Mmm, that’s worth the salmonella. Anyway, he said the early-action letters are going out right after New Years.”

“So we’ll know if we got in by then?”

“Yep. I can almost guarantee you’re in; your academics are good enough. Percy should be fine. He got the grades he needed this semester, and I put a word in confirming that his rock-climbing-accident story is the truth.”

“Thanks for that.” They’d agreed that the easiest explanation for their semester-long absence from school was the excuse Percy had used to explain away the big scar on his side when he joined the swim team: they’d gone on a climbing trip to Arizona last winter, and a freak accident had resulted in Percy’s rope breaking, him falling into her, and both of them sustaining major injuries. After months in the hospital, unable to do much work at all, they’d returned home and started school the next August. They hadn’t even been stretching the truth that much. After all, they had both fallen off a cliff, and ended up with some nasty reminders of the event. In any case, the placement tests they’d both taken at the start of the semester this year had put them well above the requirements for being seniors, so it didn’t really matter. “I’d rather know I got in by merit, so I’m glad you’re confident.”

“I’ve seen your grades, and I read your essay. You’ll be fine, both of you.”

The assurance wasn’t something Annabeth thought she needed, but it felt good. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she could get into any college she applied to when it came to merit, but her own ability didn’t always get her where she wanted to go. She’d beaten Arachne, and still ended up in Tartarus. Won the fight with that Laistrygonian in California, saved her stepbrother, and still gotten thrown out of the house. Sometimes, she’d come to realize, doing something well didn’t mean you ended up better off for it. It wasn’t a good feeling, knowing that, but it was true. And ignoring the truth never ended well. 

Brunch ended up lasting a full hour. Most of the food was gone in half that time, but conversation kept up until Sally excused herself to start cleaning up the kitchen. Percy followed her in, wanting to help since he’d slept through most of the cooking. This left Annabeth with little to do, and she grabbed the book she’d been meaning to start and sat on the couch. It was another old Stephen King novel, one she’d picked up from the school library. She read through the noon hour, getting the gist of the story. It was typically weird, but she liked it. The main character was a cop whose friend died when a drunk driver hit his car. The dead man’s son started hanging around the police barracks, and was in the process of hearing about the strange car that the cops kept in their storage shed when Percy exited the kitchen. 

“Hey, want to go see Rockefeller Center?” He asked. 

The question surprised Annabeth. She hadn’t been there, but she’d never mentioned wanting to go, and the weather was cold and misty. But she’d not been outside in three days, and it would be nice to see something besides four walls and snow through the window. So she stood up, marking her page and setting the book on the table. “Sure, let me get my jacket.” She laced up her Doc Martens and shrugged her canvas jacket on. It wasn’t really a winter coat, but the flannel lining was soft and warm enough for anything December in New York threw her way. 

The weather wasn’t much better than it’d looked out the window. A blanket of fog and snow cut visibility to a hundred yards, and muted the street sounds. The Rockefeller was an easy mile’s walk, so they took Fifth Avenue south, stepping around crowds of shoppers and locals trying to get to Central Park. As she walked, Annabeth brushed her hand across her belt, checking for the dagger Percy had given her. She knew she’d taken it along, but the feel of the handle was so much better than the stopgap weapon she’d been using. Percy really had outdone himself with the gift, and she hoped the present she’d found for him wouldn’t be a disappointment by comparison. She’d found a fur-lined bomber jacket that had caught her eye when she remembered that he’d once mentioned liking one he saw in a store window. Good for weather like this, but not ostentatious or flashy.

Rockefeller Center was crowded with tourists. Percy grabbed her hand and muscled through the crowd, giving a running commentary as he went. 

“None of the locals actually come here this time of day,” he said, pushing past a group of Koreans holding cameras. “They go when it’s quiet, and even then once you see it once you don’t really need to go back.”

“Why? It’s beautiful.” Thalia would have absolutely  hated the pine tree, but it really did look nice. Whoever decorated it had gone all-out with lights, making it glow in the afternoon mist. 

“Well, the tree’s the same every year, and honestly once you’ve seen it, there’s not much else to see.”

“It’s neat, though, look how tall it is!” Annabeth had seen redwoods that were larger, but a pine tree that looked like it belonged in an old forest out West standing in the middle of the city was a cool sight to see. “Any idea how they got it here?” She imagined a big tractor-trailer carting a freshly cut pine down Fifth Avenue.

“I think they drive it down from upstate on a truck. One year they used a plane, but that was in the eighties or something. I saw it driving in once, they had to use a crane to get it vertical.”

The Jacksons’ tree didn’t need a crane to set up, but it had more under it than the one downtown when Annabeth and Percy made it back to the apartment. Several wrapped presents sat around it, and a few larger ones leaned against the end table it stood on. Annabeth didn’t really think of herself as the type of person to get excited over that kind of thing. When she’d been younger, most things under the tree were meant for her stepbrothers, though her dad always made sure to buy her a few books. Even last year, when she’d had Christmas here with Sally and Paul, there hadn’t been much to celebrate. But this year felt different. The reason why was obvious, but it still struck her as weird that she was actually looking forward to sitting around the tree and exchanging gifts. It was, Percy had explained, a family tradition to celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th and then sleep late the next day in advance of a big dinner. That meant a smaller, more intimate meal tonight, which sounded just about perfect after two hours in the cold. Paul had seared up a quartet of ribeyes in a cast-iron pan while they were out, and the whole apartment smelled like rosemary, garlic, and cooked meat. The four of them sat around the little kitchen table and savored their food, spending more time eating than they had in months. The demands of work and school and the occasional weekend trip to Camp meant that dinners, while pleasant, were usually abbreviated affairs. Not tonight. Sally must have defined “small dinner” by Italian standards, which meant multiple courses made of somewhat less food than they would’ve been for a big meal. The first course was a proper  antipasto  of cured meat, with good Italian cheese on the side. Then came the ribeye, with roasted potatoes. Sally had splurged on a bottle of Napa Valley red, or so she said. Annabeth’s knowledge of alcohol was limited to the rum-and-cokes that the Stoll brothers once snuck onto the beach one Saturday night, and the blood-red, mildly sweet wine tasted way better. 

After the wine and food were gone, they all headed back into the living room. Dessert would come after presents, Sally said, but she brought a plate of cheese and crackers with her and set it on the coffee table anyway. Annabeth wasn’t sure she could eat anything else, but she did anyway. It was beginning to dawn on her that she’d never really enjoyed celebrating anything until now. It wasn’t that she needed the rich food, or the white submariner’s turtleneck that Sally and Paul gave her, to enjoy the holiday. She’d had food and gifts before. The difference, she realized as Paul thumbed through the biography of Eisenhower she’d found for him at the bookshop down the street, was that this was the first time she didn’t feel like she was intruding on someone else’s good times. She  _belonged_ here, with Percy and his family. Sitting on the floor opening gifts felt desirable, and not like a ritual she had to get through before she could retreat back to whatever she’d been doing an hour before. And then her dad called. 

He rang the Jacksons’ landline, for which Annabeth thanked all the gods on Olympus. She did have a cell phone, but seldom used it since monsters could home in on a demigod’s voice if it were broadcast over the airwaves. So, if nothing else, she knew her dad remembered what he’d told her about how dangerous it was to call her on anything without a hardwired connection. 

“Annabeth?” Her father sounded bedraggled, like he’d been up for too long. 

“Hi, dad. What’s up?” She sounded annoyed, and she was. Of all the times he could have called, he did it now?  _Stop_.  He wouldn’t have known what she was up to, and Annabeth couldn’t blame him for calling on Christmas. 

“Ah, nothing, really. Just calling to say hello, really. How are you?”

She glanced into the living room. There was Percy, trying his best to shrug on a wool v-neck while Sally and Paul tried not to laugh too hard. “Things are good! We had a big dinner, and some friends from Camp are coming over tomorrow. What about you guys?”

“Oh gods, it’s all gone to hell! I mean, I’m sure your brothers enjoyed, but it’ll be good to have some peace and- hey! Careful with that!” He sighed into the receiver. “Sorry. We decided to give the boys lacrosse gear, and they seem to think the living room is a playing field. But anyway. I wanted to call because I do have something for you this year.”

“Oh, dad, you didn’t have to do anything!” Annabeth hadn’t received much from her dad since she started living at camp full-time, though she would always keep the college ring he once sent her. And that was fine. She didn’t need gifts, really.

“No, Annabeth, I do. We... do. Helen and I didn’t do right by you when you visited. I should’ve called before, should’ve done more...”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. And I don’t blame you, not really. I did almost get Bobby killed.”

“No, you didn’t. You can’t help the... aura, or whatever it is that attracts those things,but it isn’t your fault. I realized that a long time ago, but Helen, well...”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“Listen.” Her dad’s voice grew serious. “You’re going to school next year, right? We didn’t really talk about it, but what’s the plan?”

“We’re looking at Enstone, up across the Sound.”

“Not New Rome?”

“No. It wouldn’t have worked out. Place is too...different. Too unfamiliar.”

“Oh.” He sounded dissapointed, but was that really surprising? “Well, either way. We’ve decided we want to help. Financially.”

Annabeth’s brain shut off for about a half-second. When it came back online, she was sweating. Of all the parts of applying to college, she’d given the least thought to paying for it. She knew she could draw a scholarship anywhere she went, and figured that loans would cover the rest. But this? Totally unexpected. “Wait, dad. You can’t do that, I can’t-“

“We can and will, Annabeth. It’s the least we can do.”

“Dad, I-“ Suddenly, she was overwhelmed. The whiplash of going from wondering whether or not her father even wanted to see her again to hearing that he wanted to help her through school was worse than getting Zeus-slapped across the Atlantic aboard the  _Argo II_.  “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, of course, I can’t say that enough.”

“You don’t have to say anything, just let me know what ends up happening with where you go, and we’ll talk then.” He sounded uneasy, like he wasn’t sure they should be talking. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. I love you, Annabeth, and enjoy the rest of the holiday.”

“I love you too, dad, I-“ but the line clicked dead. Annabeth set the phone back on its hook, and leaned against the wall. What the fuck had just happened? Was her dad seriously trying to smooth things over with money? After last summer, she wouldn’t be surprised. But at the same time, he had always said she’d be able to go to school if she wanted to. If being thrown off the front lawn didn’t change that, then maybe there was something left of their relationship that they could salvage. But that was a problem for another day. For now, she was missing out on time with people who actually wanted her around, no matter what she brought with her. 

Jason and Piper showed up at three in the afternoon on Christmas Day. Annabeth met them at the building’s main doors, and immediately regretted not wearing more than a sweater. “Over here, guys!” He shouted, trying to be heard over a group of what looked like overgrown sorority girls heading for the doors. Piper’s head snapped around, and she pulled Jason through the crowd. 

The elevator lurched and jerked as it ascended, but at least it was quiet. Piper threw her arms around Annabeth once the doors closed. “It’s so good to see you!”

“How’ve you guys been?” She asked, returning Piper’s hug. 

“Other than almost freezing to death just now, pretty good. We’re heading out to Camp Jupiter after we visit you, so it’ll be nice to get some sun.” Jason shoved his hands in his pockets. “Where’s Percy?”

“Upstairs, probably watching sports.”

“Not helping cook?” Jason looked slightly surprised.

“The building isn’t burning, so I assume he isn’t.” She grinned. “Water doesn’t exactly work on oil fires.”

Annabeth felt Piper’s eyes on her neck, on the scar she’d largely stopped hiding, but that didn’t matter. She was among friends, people who’d seen her in much worse states than this. Piper wouldn’t judge. Besides, the wound didn’t even hurt much anymore, and if she really cared, there were always turtleneck sweaters.

“How’s your neck?” 

She couldn’t help but flinch. Piper must have seen it, because she put a hand on Annabeth’s shoulder and said, “Oh, gods, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“No, no, it’s fine. Really doesn’t hurt anymore, and I only hide it at school. Too many questions if people see it, you know?” Percy had been fielding concerned questions about the scar on his torso from his swim teammates, random people in the hall, and even a few teachers. Annabeth thought all the attention was entirely inappropriate, and she decided that unzipping her jacket really wasn’t worth being stared at. 

The elevator stopped, its little bell  _dinging_ as the doors opened. Annabeth led her friends down the hall, unlocking the apartment door once she reached it. Percy greeted them at the door, and, after Jason and Piper introduced themselves to Percy’s parents, they sat down in the living room and caught up on the past few months. Jason and Piper were attending a Californian boarding school and enjoying themselves, although they both seemed a little on edge.Maybe it was the travel. Percy had been worried sick on the flights to and from San Francisco, especially after a bout of turbulence that happened as the plane transited a thunderstorm. He’d sworn that Zeus was trying to kill him when they landed at JFK after three jolting, rough circuits of the city while the pilots waited for a late-summer cloudburst to clear. But Jason was used to flying. Perhaps they still had the events of last summer on their minds. But, other than the stress that they never seemed to quite let go of, Annabeth’s friends seemed to be none the worse for wear. They’d decided on staying in New Rome for college, and, while they were disappointed that Percy and Annabeth wouldn’t be joining them, they seemed understanding when she explained that they just hadn’t felt comfortable when they saw how the campus operated. Piper went a little quiet when the topic of New Rome came up, but she seemed like she was looking forward to attending. Annabeth decided she’d talk to her friend in private, and find out just what was going on. She wasn’t the world’s best reader of people, but not all was right with Piper. 

Dinner began at five P.M. sharp. The kitchen table was too small for six, so they ate in the living room with their plates on the coffee table. It was really informal and a big contrast to the night before, but Annabeth didn’t mind. The food still tasted good. They ate baked ham and pan-cooked mushroomsand the best pasta salad Annabeth had ever tasted, all washed down with more red wine. But, now that she had Jason in a position to answer questions, her focus turned toward the trip she knew he’d taken to Sicily just after Thanksgiving. He and Nico Di Angelo had gone on a scouting mission to find out where the European half-blood enclave was located, and, aside from confirmation that the trip hadn’t resulted in any injuries, she knew nothing about what had happened.

“So,” Annabeth asked, “what’d you find in Sicily?”

Jason set his fork down, and wiped his mouth on the corner of his napkin. “I was waiting for you to ask. It was, well, interesting.”

“In what way? Is there actually a camp there?”

“I wouldn’t call it a camp,  per se. More like a… monestary, to be honest. That’s what it reminded me of.” 

Wait. What?  Annabeth blinked. “How do you mean?”

“It’s built on a mountainside overlooking Palermo, and you can only get in by the main door. Well, or shadow-travel, which is how Nico and I got close.”

“So I take it you had to sneak around.”

“Not even that, we couldn’t get inside. Place was locked down tighter than a military base, so we took a vantage point on the rocks above the courtyard and got as many pictures as we could.”

“Have any we can see?” 

Jason shook his head. “Nope. Chiron’s got the originals and he can show you, but he doesn’t want any of this getting out. No repeating this to anyone, and that goes for everyone here. Understand?” Nods around the room, even from Paul and Sally. 

Annabeth sighed. “Damn, I’d hoped they’d be a little more hospitable, but they don’t sound all that welcoming.”

“We’d have been dead in a hot second if we tried going in the front.” 

“Any idea how many people were in there?” Percy asked, between bites of ham. 

“Place could hold 50, at least. Felt bigger than that, but it wasn’t exactly crowded. Just guys with swords. Definitely half-bloods, though.”

“Any idea if there were Greeks and Romans, or just one?”

“Both of them. They had shrines to the major gods in the courtyard, Greeks on one side and Romans on the other.” Jason grinned. “Felt kinda schizophrenic to me.”

Annabeth nodded, satisfied for the moment. Chiron would probably have more to say, and she could always pigeonhole Jason after dinner to try and get more out of him. But for now, she ate. And what a meal it was. She didn’t normally eat ham, just because it wasn’t served much at Camp. Sally had baked this to perfection and carved it into thick slices. It tasted like honey, thanks to the glaze cooked onto the skin, and it went perfectly with the rich gravy Annabeth had done most of the work on. She hadn’t learned to cook until she moved in with the Jacksons, but, with Sally’s help and some (admittedly pretty frustrating) evenings attempting to get a few basic recipes right, she picked up on it fast. And, after what felt like endless time spent in the apartment’s cramped little kitchen, she’d done probably a quarter of the work on the food that now piled high on the table. The plate full of garlic bread was her work, as was the gravy and the roasted asparagus. Nothing complicated, but, in Percy’s words, it tasted like something his mom would’ve made. That was high praise, and she felt like she was walking on air for the rest of the meal. 

Annabeth cornered Piper after dinner, pulling her into the spare bedroom with the excuse that she wanted to show her the new knife Percy had given her. After a few minutes of Piper examining the blade and wondering how anyone could live with the clutter Percy left lying around (it wasn’t even that bad, really, not compared to some places she’d slept), Annabeth asked the question she’d been meaning to all night.

“You seem worried, what’s up?”

Piper smiled, a sad, sardonic half-smirk.“It’s Leo.”

“Leo?” Annabeth had expected her friend to be nervous about college, or unsure of whether Jason wanted her around, or any other one or the worries that teenage girls usually had to deal with. But Leo? The scroll he’d sent from wherever he and Festus had landed after the blast that scattered Gaea to the winds said he was alive and with Calypso, of all people. If the explosive equivalent of a small nuclear weapon couldn’t kill him, then surely he’d survive the inevitable heartbreak he got from the hermit titaness. “What do you mean? Did he send another message?”

“He didn’t. That’s the problem. Jason and I went looking for him, and he isn’t on Ogygia, so he could be anywhere. The least he could do is tell us if he’ll be back.”

“You  went to Ogygia? And didn’t get stuck there?” Annabeth had gotten over Percy’s involuntary trip to Calypso’s island a long time ago, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever stop being suspicious of the woman’s motives. 

“Yeah, and it was deserted. No one’s been there for months.”

“Well, love makes people do strange things, maybe he’s just too distracted to want to come back.”

“I guess, but this isn’t like him. It feels like something happened, and he can’t get in contact. Or doesn’t want to, which actually feels worse.”

Being abandoned by her friends wasn’t a new feeling, but Annabeth wasn’t sure how she felt about Leo being gone. He was a good person, and she’d seen him as a friend once she got used to how he acted, but the fact that he’d been blown up, flown off to Calypso’s island, and then gone gods-knew-where hit just a little too close to home. It brought back memories of Percy’s funeral, and the two weeks she’d spent thinking he was gone forever. That wasn’t Leo’s fault, of course, but the association was still there. Even so, Piper was worried. Annabeth put a hand on her shoulder. “Did he leave any clue to where he went?”

“No. Just dragon footprints on the beach, so at least he’s got Festus. I don’t know, he’s probably fine. Just too busy eloping to think of anything else.” Piper shook her head, but she looked happier than she had when they sat down. “I guess we can only hope. I’m not sure if I want to hug him or punch him in the shoulder, but either way it’d be nice to be able to.”

They sat and talked for a while longer, about school and college and other things that didn’t involve a Texan and his magic dragon. Piper, surprisingly enough, agreed with Annabeth’s assessment of New Rome. “I didn’t feel right there at all,” she said, spinning a lock of hair around her finger. “But I think I can get used to it.”

“You’re willing to put up with being stared at all day?”

“With my parents being who they are, that’s what happens anyway. I’ll be fine, even if I do end up sharing a room with a few stuffy old legionnaires.”

Annabeth was about to reply when someone knocked at the door. “Hey, dessert’s ready!” Percy said. 

“You coming?” Annabeth stood. “We’ve got enough ice cream to kill a horse.”

“Sure! And hey,” Piper said, one hand on the doorknob. “Thanks for listening.”

“You did it for me, back in Greece. Let’s just hope Leo makes it back.” 

After eating more brownies and ice cream than was wise, Annabeth helped set up the pull-out couch for Piper and Jason before retiring herself. Percy was still in the kitchen helping clean up, so she sat on the bed and pulled her new dagger from its sheath. It balanced perfectly, just behind the crossguard, and she found she could grab the handle between her thumb and forefinger and gain a measure of dexterity she hadn’t had with her old knife. Seven and a half inches of blade was less than she was used to, but in close quarters this little thing would be absolutely devastating. She’d have to see what it could do to a training dummy the next time she visited Camp, but for now she settled for getting the measure of the weapon’s weight and balance. Percy joined her ten minutes later, after she’d put the dagger away and picked up her novel. He sat next to her, a copy of  Autosport  on his lap. She was amazed that he was reading anything, but it was a nice change from even a year ago, when he’d had to be convinced that his biology textbook wouldn’t bite.  Well, a year ago he was in California, so... Annabeth headed that train of thought off before it could get anywhere. Percy must have noticed, though, because he glanced over. 

“Something wrong?”

“No, I’m fine, just... thinking about what Jason said earlier. About Sicily, and the odd half-Greek, half-Roman monestary. It wasn’t even a lie, since his description had been bouncing around in her head all night.

“Honestly, I’m really glad to not be taking the lead on that one.”

Annabeth leaned back next to him, making the mattress sag. “What, don’t want to go to Italy?”

“I mean, it’d be a neat trip, but…” Percy trailed off, and when Annabeth looked over, he was staring at the ground. She put a hand on his shoulder.

“Something wrong?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not really. I guess I’d rather not be off questing again when we just got back from the last one. I know it’s been a few months, but still.” He half-smiled. “Normal life’s got its perks, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He was right, if she sat down and thought. She wanted to go follow up on what Jason had found, to see this Sicilian enclave for herself and maybe get some real intel that wasn’t taken from the top of a mountain. Her Yankees cap would make getting inside and looking around easy enough. She’d thought the plan out after she and Jason talked, and getting inside wouldn’t necessarily be hard. She could slip in the entrance, or even climb down the rocks above the courtyard. But she’d have to do it alone. Nico would be the only one who could get her close enough to sneak in, and he’d be out of it after shadow-traveling. Percy would be stuck waiting outside, since he couldn’t turn invisible and couldn’t speak Italian any better than she could. She’d have no backup, and no way out if the guards cornered her. The easy solution to that dilemma, and the one she’d have fixated on a year before, was to not get caught. But she’d been thinking the same way when she fought Arachne. Had allowed arrogance to take over when stepping back and letting things happen would have been enough. Her need to lord a victory over Athena’s old enemy had almost gotten her and Percy killed. And if she’d done that, they wouldn’t be sitting on his bed recovering from the best dinner she’d ever had.So she leaned into her boyfriend’s side, and let out a long breath. 

“You OK?”

“Yeah. I’m here with you, and not a monster or angry god in sight. Like you said, this ‘normal life’ stuff is pretty good.” She smiled, trying to show that she really was fine. “I’m just not used to not taking the lead on quests.”

“It’s a weird feeling, I know. When you and Chiron started talking about this place in Sicily, part of me wanted to ask when we could go have a look, but right now I just don’t think I can do it. I’m pretty happy just, like, living. You know?”

Annabeth didn’t reply. Just nodded, lay back next to him, and put her arms around his torso. He smelled like woodsmoke, a warm piney scent that mixed with the salt-air aroma he always gave off. His hands played over her back, and she felt the warmth through her shirt. “Gods, I love you,” she mumbled, just loud enough to hear. 

“Love you too, Beth,” he replied. Any thoughts of Italy and what Jason had seen there vanished from her mind.  This was more satisfying than any quest, more fulfilling than any victory. She could pen a design to shame Wright himself, and the satisfaction would pale in comparison to what she was feeling now. The warmth, the simple safety of Percy’s arms, wasn’t a new feeling. They’d been together for more than a year, after all. But it was a new  level  of feeling. Nothing else she could do would ever make her feel as good as what she was experiencing in this moment. So she let her brain turn itself off, and shut her eyes. She’d worry about Sicily in the morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from an In Mourning album‘s title track. Seemed fitting, all told.


	9. At the Shores of Silver Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back a little early this time, since a portion of this was written well in advance.

Percy 5

Getting into college wasn’t supposed to be this simple. Percy was sure of it. After the gauntlet of essays, standardized tests, personal statements, and form-filling, he fully expected to have to fight through a warehouse full of hydras to find out if all his work had paid off. So when a pair of fancy envelopes from Enstone College arrived in the mail one evening in early January, he was prepared for the worst. Annabeth would get in, of course, but she was the smart one. School came easy to her, relatively speaking. He sighed. Not opening the letter wouldn’t change what it said. 

“Are those what I think they are?” Annabeth picked up the letter addressed to her, and slit it open with her dagger. Percy pulled a sheet of heavy paper from his. He scanned the page, still surprised that he could read with any speed at all. Before Tartarus, his brain had scrambled anything written in English. Now, it was like a switch had flipped. He could still read Ancient Greek, but the old dyslexia when it came to modern languages felt diminished. It was as if the pit of Hell had forced his brain to rewire itself. Why that made it easier to read, Percy had no idea, but he wasn’t complaining. It was only fair that he get something in exchange for the nightmares. His eyes worked down the page, then froze. He glanced back a few lines. Squinted. Read it again. “We are pleased to invite you to attend Enstone College for the-“ _What?_ His eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit,” he whispered, almost reverently.

Annabeth must have seen his reaction, because she set her letter down and grabbed his hand. 

“What’s yours say?” She asked, brow furrowed. 

“I got in!”

“Well don’t sound so surprised!” She hugged him from behind, arms around his chest, and he leaned back into her. 

“I assume you’re in too?”

“Yeah, and my dad will be glad to hear that Helen won’t have to spend much. Full scholarship, even though I probably don’t deserve one.”

“Oh, stop. You’ll be the smartest person there!”

“Let’s not go too crazy, but good gods, Percy, we did it!” Annabeth practically dragged him to his feet, spinning him around and pulled him in for a kiss. He leaned down, arms around her, and threaded a hand through her hair. They stood by the table, her jacket half-off and his hair standing all on end. Percy felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, even as Annabeth held onto them. Whether or not he’d be following her to school or doing... something else that he didn’t want to think about, had been hanging over his head since the trip to New Rome. And now, with a few cents in postage and a page of letterhead, his problem was solved. They’d still have to figure out living arrangements, since all the freshmen had to live on campus and neither of them had any idea how room assignments worked, but that was a problem for another day. Another month, preferably. The hard part was over. All Percy wanted to do now was stand here, Annabeth in his arms, and grin like an idiot. 

The next two months passed in a whirlwind of schoolwork and swimming and plenty of terrible weather. Percy almost swore off driving altogether after the swim-team bus did some drifting on the interstate as it headed northwest for a meet in Syracuse, but flying a pegasus in the clouds that seemed to stick to the horizon like cold syrup just wouldn’t be possible. So he held on tight while the driver slid the bus down the off-ramp, steering with the throttle like he was throwing a race car around the Parabolica and not trying to keep a huge yellow Twinkie-on-wheels pointed in the right direction.

He still got questions about the long, ugly scar running down his side. The other swimmers on Goode’s team were all used to it by now, but his competitors always asked whether he’d been in a knife fight or fallen through a glass window. Even one of his teachers, a weasel-faced woman who taught economics, asked if everything was alright at home. Annabeth had been more than a little offended at hearing about that exchange. What right did anyone have to ask about something that wasn’t their business, she’d asked, and Percy agreed. At the same time, he didn’t want to cause any problems, so he knuckled under and ignored the looks he got. 

School felt more and more like a distraction as the end of February approached. Percy and Annabeth had both signed on at Enstone College, and they weren’t in danger of failing any classes, so why were they still doing hours of homework every night? He’d asked Paul about that, after finishing a five-page essay for the weasel-woman’s econ class, and all he said was that some teachers “had a hard-on for making students sweat, but don’t tell them I said that.” Percy swore himself to silence, but couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the idea of a middle-aged woman getting off on reading long papers. 

Spring break arrived just in time, along with some good news. Percy’s mom’s novel had sold well enough that her publisher wanted her to go to a writer’s conference in Hawaii and give a talk. They said they’d fly her and a guest out for the last weekend in March, which, coincidentally enough, was when Goode went on its break. Since the conference started on a Friday, she and Paul would have to leave Thursday, but they offered to grab tickets for a flight out that left Friday just after school ended. He and Annabeth would be in the air all night, but, since going west meant you gained time, they could sleep and wake up when they got to Hawaii. He wasn’t sure about air travel, especially after the turbulent storm-fest he’d experienced on the way back from California. But, as Annabeth pointed out, they’d be flying over his father’s territory. So he agreed to come along, and, more importantly, spend a full week on the white, sandy beaches of Oahu.

The prospect of Hawaii was exciting enough that it made the two weeks between learning of the trip and leaving for it pass in a blur. That would’ve been fine, were it not for the fact that the week before spring break was also the week of midterms. As a result, instead of a lazy evening on the couch once his mom and Paul left for the airport, Percy found himself staring down a blank Word document that he’d have to turn into four pages of copy on the fate of Louis the Sixteenth. Even Annabeth, normally the serious student, was exasperated. 

“Three tests and a paper, so we can do it all again in a month and a half? This is crazy!” She’d been grousing all evening, and Percy couldn’t blame her. They’d already done the one thing that high school was supposed to prepare you for, and now they had to slog through hours of work that felt even harder than the actual test you took to get into college? He was starting to think that Paul was right about some of the teachers having more than a little fun making students suffer. But, mercifully, the week ended without too much red ink being spilt. His history paper wouldn’t win any awards, but it wouldn’t drop his grade either. Even so, tossing his backpack in his locker and swapping it for the overnight bag he’d brought to school, then slamming the door and heading for the exit, felt a little too satisfying.

Because their flight left so soon after school ended, Percy and Annabeth didn’t even have time to stop at home and collect their luggage. Paul’s solution had been to just bring their things along when he and Sally left on Thursday, which meant that all they had to take to the airport was their plane tickets and anything they might have wanted during the flight. Unfortunately, Percy’s carry-on included a notebook full of assignments to work on over the break. A small notebook, but still. He was still nervous about getting on a plane, but Zeus seemed to be less bothered by his presence in the air since last summer, when he’d spent some pretty significant time on the _Argo II_ as it soared above the Mediterranean. Besides, flying to Hawaii meant crossing an ocean, and that was his dad’s place. So, as Annabeth found their seats in the Boeing, he decided that this flight wouldn’t be so bad. He even got to sit by the window.

The plane was maybe two-thirds full, not surprising for one leaving this late. They sat near the back, and found that they were the only passengers in their row and the one behind it. After the usual safety announcement, the big jet pushed back from the gate and began its taxi to the runway. It felt sluggish and slow, unlike the smaller regional jets Percy had flown on before. But when it reached the end of the runway and the pilot buried the throttle, the engines’ sound changed from a slow, steady thrum to a screaming roar, far louder than anything he’d heard aboard a plane. Runway signs, buildings, and trees whipped by as they accelerated to takeoff speed and rocketed aloft. Annabeth leaned into him, trying to see out the window. The plane banked hard to the left, circling the airport as it climbed over Long Island. They could see the whole of Manhattan, and Percy squinted in the sunlight to look for their building. He thought he could see it amid a sea of high-rises, but he wasn’t sure. Before he could ask Annabeth what she thought, the plane leveled out, and all he could see was New Jersey. He turned away from the glass, not wanting to pollute his vision. Imagine living _there,_ he thought, and not being able to say you were from New York!

Within the hour, the plane reached its cruising altitude and a stewardess came by offering dinner. Percy decided on chicken Parmesan and a coffee, amazed that they served hot drinks in the evening. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t what he expected. It came in a plastic tray like a TV dinner, and the chicken looked like it’d died in about 2005. He poked at it with the flimsy plastic fork. “Jeez, no one tell Alectryon, he’ll incinerate the shit out of the caterer.”

Annabeth looked over from her pasta, which looked more palatable by a mile. She grimaced. “You sure that isn’t still alive?”

“Let’s find out, I guess.” He shoved his fork in, picking up the whole slab of meat and taking a bite. It was cold inside, but the texture was consistent, so at least it was (hopefully) cooked right. Chewing was an ordeal, and he had to force himself to swallow. “Dead for sure. Got any pepper?”

“They didn’t give me any either. Here, see if this helps.” She poured some of her marinara into his tray. It was watery and more orange than red, but it would serve. 

“Thanks.” He took a second bite, and the sauce did improve it just a little. “At least the parmesan’s good.” He scarfed the rest of the chicken down, washing his mouth out with a sip of coffee between bites. The same stewardess came by to take their trays, and Annabeth settled into a novel. Percy had brought a book as well, the biography of a Formula 1 mechanic he’d picked up at the school library, and he read a few chapters before looking outside and realizing that it was well past sunset. Normally, he wouldn’t be tired at this hour, but the week of frantic studying was catching up to him. He marked his page, and turned off his reading light. Maybe if he slept now he’d miss breakfast. What would they serve? Deviled eggs and ham tartar? He didn’t plan to be awake to find out.

Annabeth squeezed his arm, pulling him out of a dreamless sleep. “I’m going to the bathroom, be right back,” she whispered, eyes wide open in the darkened cabin. 

“Um... okay. Don’t get lost.” He yawned, and looked around. Most of the passengers were asleep, and the view out the window was of the Pacific, shimmering under a full moon. He peered out onto the water, amazed at how far he could see. There was what looked like an island chain in the distance, and the sky behind them glowed with an amber light. They must’ve just passed over Los Angeles and the Catalinas, Percy realized. 

A few minutes later, Annabeth squeezed back into their row, sitting down and retrieving her book from the seat pocket. As she bent forward, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer.

“What’s up?” He asked.

Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Seven rows ahead of us, on the aisle. That’s an _empousa_.”

Percy craned his neck to see over the seat, and gulped. The monster sat right where Annabeth said it was, facing forward and holding a travel magazine in its claw-hands. 

“Shit.” He whispered. “Did it see you?” 

“No. Didn’t even flinch when I walked past.”

“Maybe it isn’t here for us.” 

“Have to hope not, I guess.” Annabeth stole another look at the monster, ducking back down when it looked away from its magazine. “Not like there’s much we can do.”

Percy groaned under his breath. She was right. One _empousa_ would not make for a difficult fight in literally any other situation, but on a plane to Hawaii surrounded by mortals, the she-vampire might as well have been Hecate herself. He turned to Annabeth, his stomach churning all of a sudden. She always had a plan. Right now, though, she looked as worried as he felt. 

“All we can do is wait it out. This is the exact wrong time and place for a fight.” She shook her head. “Besides, only one of us has anything useful.”

Percy grimaced. Riptide was in his pocket, as always, but Annabeth’s dagger was in Hawaii with his mom and Paul. Might as well have been on the Moon, for all the good it would do her now. He felt her hand slip into his, and squeeze hard. She was scared, he could tell, and he didn’t blame her. This was the kind of scenario demigods had nightmares about. Well, most of them. He’d have paid a stack of drachmas to dream about vampire seductresses on 777s instead of his usual nighttime roulette of dead Annabeth, dead parents, and dead friends. He squeezed back. “I could always just go up and ambush her.”

“And what, get arrested for attacking some poor woman with a ballpoint pen? Don’t be a seaweed brain, the Mist isn’t that good.”

She was right, as usual. So he sat back, hand in hers, and hoped to all the gods of Olympus that the vampire would leave them alone. Helplessness was a feeling he hated, and he knew Annabeth was the same way, but all he could do was rub circles in the back of her hand with his thumb and hope neither of them turned into _empousa_ snacks. 

A half hour later, the real problems began. First, the captain announced that the rear lavatories would be shut down for the remainder of the flight thanks to “mechanical issues.”

“More like food issues,” Percy said, keeping his voice low.

Annabeth snorted, grinning. “Speak for yourself, my pasta was fine!” 

“That makes one of us. I felt like puking after that chicken.”

Annabeth motioned to the airsick bag sticking out of the seat pocket. “In there, please, not on me.”

“Don’t worry, I should be fine. Guess I miss Mom’s cooking.”

“Her chicken parm _is_ hard to beat.” 

Then real trouble hit. It took fifteen minutes or so for Percy’s stomach, which had just started the journey to normalcy after the _empousa_ scare, started up round two of its Olympic floor exercise routine. He laid his head back in the seat and inhaled slowly, trying to calm his gut down. 

“Hey, what’s wrong? Feeling alright?” Annabeth asked, hand still in his despite the sweat that now soaked it. 

“I think I may have spoken too soon about that chicken.”

“Oh, shit, Percy. Here,” she said, reaching for the airsick bag.

He pushed it away, the movement sparking a pang in his gut. “That won’t help.” He met her eyes. “I have to find a restroom.”

“Are there any that aren’t up front?” She looked around, grey eyes wide. 

“No, the only one behind us is broken.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” She whispered.

“Don’t say that, not the best...” his stomach landed a perfect frontflip. _And a seven from the East German Judge_. “Not the best choice of words”

Her face went red, and he smiled despite himself. “You know I love you, right?”

“And I love you.” She smiled, the tension in her face disappearing for a moment. 

“I think I’m going to have to go for it.” 

“Just be careful. Please.”

“I’ll be alright. Besides, if anything stupid happens, it’ll look like she attacked me.” 

Percy unbuckled his seatbelt. “Let’s hope she isn’t that dumb.” He patted Annabeth’s shoulder, and headed forward towards the restroom. As he passed the _empousa,_ he felt her eyes burning holes in the back of his t-shirt. He sped up, and, a dozen steps later, locked the lavatory door behind him.

Five minutes and a _lot_ of stifled groans later, Percy stood up, refastened his belt, and flushed the toilet. The drainpipe _fwooshed_ , and he washed his hands for longer than he really needed to. Then he opened the lavatory door, and stumbled right into the _empousa._

It looked nothing like the disproportionate, slightly smoking woman he’d walked past. Now it stood on mismatched legs, and used its long, ugly claws to force him back into the restroom. Flaming hair scorched the air as it opened its maw, showing off needle-sharp teeth and screaming louder than he thought possible. 

“Fuck!” He shouted, side-stepping the monster’s advance as he drew Riptide. The _xiphos_ lashed out, slicing the vampire in half, and it erupted in a column of flame and golden dust as it tried and failed to teleport away. Percy staggered into the aisle, smoke and dust in his eyes. Annabeth was on her feet already, rushing towards him. She reached out, grabbing his arm. Then the world exploded.

Percy felt himself go weightless. Faster than thought, his feet left the floor and he rocketed through the hole in the airliner’s skin, Annabeth clinging hard to his waist. They tumbled up and away from the speeding jet, watching as the pilots brought it under control. The plane banked slightly right and began to descend, smoke trailing from the fuselage.

“Annabeth! Hold on!” He screamed, grabbing her arm. The jetstream whipped them around, and he felt her lose her grip. Before she could spiral away, he caught her torso with both of his legs, desperately searching for something, anything, to grab onto with his hands. His left found the hem of her shirt, and he pulled her into him, climbing down her body until their faces met. Her mouth was open in a scream he couldn’t hear above the wailing wind, and he joined her, crying out to every god and goddess he could think of to save them. They fell like this for another minute, maybe two, a mass of tangled limbs. The wind sliced through his shirt and attacked his skin, cold enough to feel like it would freeze him solid. All he could do was pull Annabeth closer, and hope for a miracle. 

Then his brain did something that, in any other time and place, he would have kicked it for. It flashed him back to Tartarus, to their fall through miles of acrid clouds and burning vapors. The intrusion lasted less than a second, but when it ended, he knew exactly what had to happen. The ocean stretched out below them, miles upon miles of pristine water shimmering in the moonlight. He felt himself warming up as they fell, and he realized that he could hear something besides buffeting when Annabeth’s panicked cries finally cut through the wind. He put a hand behind her head, pulling her ear to his mouth. 

“Beth! It’s alright, we’re going to be alright!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. Hoped to the gods she could hear him. “We’ve fallen from higher, and we survived that! Just hold on to me!” He pulled back, looking her dead in the face. Had she even heard him? Her eyes were open and he thought he saw her saying something, but the wind was too loud in his ears. “I love you!” Then he looked back down to the water, and concentrated hard. He felt a tug in his gut, and the ocean began bubbling like a boiling pot, fizzing and popping in a hundred-yard circle around where he thought they would land. The bubbling sea would, if his theory was right, act as a cushion instead of stopping them cold. If he was wrong, then at least the last thing he’d said to Annabeth had been worth something. He kept his mind focused on the sea, buried his head in Annabeth’s shoulder, and waited. 

The impact hurt, even for someone as used to falling into water as Percy. He’d rotated himself below Annabeth just before they landed, so that he would take the worst of the blow, and the wind left him as soon as they slammed into the foaming sea. Gritting his teeth, Percy gathered as many bubbles together as he could, forming a huge single pocket of air in the raging water. 

They lay on the near-solid border between air and sea, still tangled in each other. “Annabeth. Hey, hey, we made it!” Percy rasped, hoarse from shouting. Her eyes opened, red and watery. She said nothing, then slumped over onto her side. Silent sobs wracked her shoulders. Percy pulled her close, letting her cry as he held her. He was close to tears himself, but he forced them back. Annabeth needed him, and he would be there. His own fear, and amazement at having survived, could wait. 

He didn’t know how long it took her to calm down. Eventually, he managed to move enough to lean against the solid bubble’s sloping side, and cradled her in his lap. And there they remained, fifty feet below the Pacific, for at least ten minutes. Finally, she sniffled, wiped her eyes on his shirt (which he had now mentally flash-dried twice), and cleared her throat. 

“How in Hades did we survive that?”

“I broke the surface tension on the water, made us a softer landing.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a while after that, and Percy could tell she was holding back more tears. 

“It’s OK to cry, Annabeth, you don’t have to-

“Gods _damnit,_ Percy, why can’t we get just a little bit of peace? Why can’t we live our lives and not have to be looking over our stupid shoulders all the time?”

He wanted to give her an answer, but to do that, he needed one for himself. His first instinct was to blame the gods, but that was stupid. They couldn’t keep every monster away from every half-blood; that just wasn’t what they did. Could they? He’d asked himself that before, more than once, and had even brought it up with Chiron once. The centaur had just smiled at him, a distant look in his eye, and said that the gods weren’t always omnipotent, much as the myths suggested otherwise. There’d been lots of thundering after that pronouncement, which only went to prove it correct. 

“I wish I knew, Beth,” was all he could say. 

“When we got thrown out of that plane, all I could think about was the way down to Tartarus. Couldn’t move, couldn’t get my head straight. Even the first time we fell, I could still think on the way down!” She was shaking again, tremors rushing down her arms. “What the hell is wrong with me?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You went through something that would have killed almost anyone else who experienced it, and it stuck with you. That isn’t weakness, that’s just how things are right now.” He brought a hand up to her chin, raising her eyes to meet his. They were a flat, watery grey, but he caught a spark of the old Annabeth in there, the one who had stood up to the literal bane of her existence and come out ahead. “It’s still with me too, but all we can do is try and push on. Yeah?”

She nodded, blinking and pursing her lips. “I know. It’s just, well, sometimes it’s all too much. It’s paralyzing. I thought I could handle it, but it isn’t going away.”

“Then lean on me. Whatever you need, I can do it. I swear on the Styx.” Her eyes widened, and she breathed in sharply.

“Percy, you can’t-“

He kissed her, hard on the lips. She leaned into him, and when he broke off she almost fell. 

“I can and will. I love you, Annabeth Chase, and nothing will ever change that.” He got to his feet, helping her up with him. “Besides, you’d do the same for me.”

She leaned in again, arms around his waist. “You know I would. I love you.” 

He grinned, feeling the tension slide from his shoulders. They stood for a long minute, then Annabeth backed away and wiped her eyes on her shirt. 

“We’ve got to go,” she said. “Your parents will be worried sick!”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Then Percy whistled, loud and high in the stale air. 

“What was that for?” Annabeth asked, hands slamming over her ears. 

“I’m calling for a hippocampus. Only way to do it. It’s this, or we wait for the Navy to pass by and give us a lift.”

She grinned at the thought of them being pulled from the sea, bone-dry, by a confused sailor. “Well, that just wouldn’t do.”

“Way too many questions to answer. So, seahorses it is.” As he spoke, a sleek, rainbow-skinned creature zipped past their bubble, poking its head in close to see them. “And, there we go! Best taxi service in the Pacific.”

They arrived in Honolulu just after dawn. The hippocampus let them off just offshore, and Percy kept Annabeth dry the best he could as they waded in. The lack of food and water since that morning had taken its toll, and Percy’s head hurt as if he’d drunk too much wine. The sand, shining silver in the moonlight, was welcoming beyond expectation. Annabeth fell to her hands and knees as soon as she stepped from the water. 

“You alright?” Percy asked, brows knitted together. She hadn’t seemed this tired even a few minutes ago.

“I’ll be OK, just.... need to get used to walking again.”

“My Annabeth, with sea legs? I don’t believe it!” 

“Oh, stop! You know I have trouble with this!” She laughed, trying to stand up. 

“Here,” he said, extending a hand. She took it, and found herself being pulled into his arms. “Hey.”

She grinned, and stood on her toes to kiss him. “Come on, Seaweed Brain, your parents are waiting.”

“I did land us right outside their hotel, so let’s hope they’re here.” 

The girl running the hotel’s front desk didn’t even flinch when Percy and Annabeth walked through the doors, looking like they’d just stepped out from in front of a giant leaf blower. 

“Can I help you?” She asked, boredom seeping through her customer-service smile.

“We’re with the Jackson-Blofis party, but our flight got in early,” Annabeth said. 

“Jackson-Blofis? Like the fish?

“Yep,” Percy confirmed. 

The desk girl opened a window on her computer monitor, and appeared to scroll through. Her face brightened, if only fractionally. “Ah, here you go. You’re expected.” She produced a pair of key-cards, handing them over the counter. “Room 712. Up the elevator and to the left.”

“Thanks, and, um, could we get some extra towels?” Annabeth asked.

“Of course.” The girl reached under the desk, and out came a set of matching cream-white bath towels. “If you’ve need of anything else, I’m more than happy to help!” She sounded less than thrilled at the prospect, but the sentiment was nice. 

Annabeth begged off, and Percy followed her to the elevators. “You OK to take these up?” He asked. She’d been able to use the elevators in their apartment building without issue for a few months, but new ones weren’t always so simple.

“At this point, climbing stairs might just finish what the plane started.” Percy wanted to agree, as his legs felt about ready to give out themselves, but the elevator bell interrupted. The ride up was faster than he was used to, even accounting for the shorter distance. After maybe twenty seconds, the doors opened on an olive-yellow wall, with a plaque directing them to head left for their room. He knocked, deciding that he didn’t want to surprise his parents. Paul opened the door. 

“Oh, you guys are early. Come on in!” The room was sizable, with a couch and coffee table set in the center of what was clearly meant to be a living room. Two doors on opposite walls led to what Percy assumed were bedrooms, and the balcony sat behind a sliding glass pane.

“You should’ve texted when you landed; we could’ve picked you up at the airport,” his mom said between sips of coffee.

“Yeah, about that...” Percy recounted the last five hours, starting with the bad chicken and the _empousa_ attack. His parents looked more and more concerned as he described the fall from seven miles up, and he tried to omit as many details as he could. 

“So, wait.” Paul raised a hand, clearly confused. “Won’t the airline think you guys are dead?”

Annabeth spoke up. “Maybe, but I doubt it. The Mist is pretty powerful, and it’ll suppress memory if it has to. If we’d died in the fall, then I’m guessing people would remember us getting sucked out of the plane, but we lived, so the Mist will change people’s recollection to reflect that.”

“Makes my head hurt, to be honest.” Paul rubbed his scalp, and Percy saw a flash of grey in his hair. 

“We’re just glad you’re both okay,” Sally said, setting her coffee down and pulling him and Annabeth into an embrace. “Sorry we can’t stay for breakfast, but I’ve got a panel in an hour and a half and my publisher wants Paul and I at breakfast before then. If you want to go out or get room service, go ahead.”

“Oh, that’s okay, we’re probably too tired to eat anyway.” Annabeth was the one who said it, but Percy could’ve passed out then and there. All he wanted to do was lie down for a few hours, empty stomach be damned.

As soon as his mom and Paul stepped out the door, Percy stripped his shirt off and fell into bed. Riding a hippocampus for any length of time took concentration, and, as much as he loved the animals, they weren’t really designed with comfort in mind. All he wanted to do was sleep, and hope the soreness in his back went away. He felt movement across the mattress, and rolled over to see Annabeth climbing in beside him.

“You tired too?” 

She slid under the covers, bare legs warm against his. “Yeah. Not sure I’ll be able to sleep much, but the alternative isn’t any better.”

“Well, it’s worth a try,” he said, rolling over to face her. “Want to sleep till noon and then hit the beach?”

“Only if we get breakfast first. I’m starving, but I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“I can run and grab something if you want, I’ve got a key.”

“No, you’re too warm.” She yawned. “Let’s eat later.” Before Percy could reply, he blinked and felt his eyelids protesting as he tried to open them. How was he this tired? He yawned. That was a problem for later. 

When Percy woke up, he was alone in bed. The covers on Annabeth’s side were pulled halfway onto the floor, and he felt a slight breeze. He sat up. “Annabeth?”

“Out here!” He stood up, grabbing a shirt. Annabeth sat on one of the balcony chairs. Her hair caught the sun as it coursed down behind her, glowing like golden flames. 

“When’d you get up?” He asked, taking the other seat. The view was incredible. Annabeth wore the same dark-green swimsuit she’d had in Montauk last year, along with a set of aviators. The curve of her hips drew his eye, and he was suddenly powerless to look away. Last August, she’d been twenty pounds underweight, bony and fragile. They both had been, really. But the intervening months had worked miracles. He felt stronger, the same way he did after a few months’ hard training at Camp. She’d lost the gaunt, hungover look that had stuck with her since they reunited at Camp Jupiter, and was back to running three miles every other day. Percy had to tear his eyes away to gaze over the balcony edge before he got stuck staring at her for the rest of the day. The beach, an unbroken bar of white sand, melted into an azure-blue sea that looked more like something out of a travel ad than a real place. It curved away in a gentle arc, backed by hotels and palm trees and swimming pools. Those were worth a raised eyebrow. Who wanted a swimming pool when the ocean was right there?

“Half hour ago, decided I wanted some sun.”

“Want some food? I can get room service.”

“Already done. It’ll be here in like ten minutes.”

“You really do think of everything.” 

She grinned. “Well, hope you like bacon, because it’s supposed to be really good here.”

The bacon did prove to be better than anything Percy had eaten in New York, and the rest of what ended up being a pretty sizable brunch was about as good. He and Annabeth cleaned their plates, then headed down to the beach. By now, the sun was at its highest point, and the clouds that had hung around since dawn dispersed. The ocean and sky were so similar in color that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Past the sand, all he could see was a wall of blue. Sea and sky, blending together. There was probably a metaphor in that, if he cared to look. He didn’t. He was standing on the most beautiful beach in the country, with the most beautiful girl in the world on his arm. Why overthink perfection?

Over the next few days, Percy found himself waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d gotten used to the Greek half of his life interrupting the ordinary-teenager part, and the fact that he wasn’t dodging harpies as he, Annabeth, and his parents toured Pearl Harbor and ate luau food by the beach felt more than a little suspicious. But, by midweek, his nerves calmed down. The fact that the small pile of spring-break assignments he’d brought to work on had been incinerated by the _empousa_ or blown out of the side of the airplane helped with that. He wasn’t sure where his backpack had gone, and he didn’t care. He had verifiable proof that his homework had disappeared at 35,000 feet, and the look on his teachers’ faces when he told them might just be worth the whole ordeal of losing it. As much as he could now make light of the whole airplane fiasco, he still had one big problem on his mind. How in Hades was he supposed to fly back to New York? The airline had offered to compensate them for their return tickets, but he really didn’t want to get on another airplane if he could help it. The topic came up over dinner three days before they were due to leave. They’d all gone out to a place that, according to Paul, served the best nachos on the island, and Percy found himself agreeing. As they ate, Annabeth mentioned that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to fly again even if Percy ended up finding his way underwater. 

“I’ll take a day riding a seahorse over maybe blowing up another plane,” she said, leaning in and speaking quietly.

“If you want to go back with my parents, then feel free. I’m taking the _empousa_ attack as a sign that I should probably stay out of the air.” Percy really didn’t expect more trouble as long as he wasn’t on the plane with them. After all, Annabeth wasn’t on Zeus’ bad side. 

She considered that. “I’d rather not fly myself, to be honest. At least the hippocampi aren’t as crowded. I can handle the sore back if it means I don’t have to listen to some kid lose its mind for an hour straight.”

“When do you think you’ll leave?” Paul asked. 

“Same day your flight does. I can get us to the Panama Canal in a half-day if we go as fast as we can, then another six hours to Montauk. Hippocampi don’t really get tired unless you ride them for a few days, and with this much notice my dad can probably send us a chariot.”

That matter settled, Percy turned back to his half-finished plate of nachos. Eating Mexican in Hawaii didn’t seem like the most appropriate thing, but it was better than seafood. He had no idea how he’d ever eaten fish, especially now that he could have a decent conversation with a salmon. The plate of chips disappeared amid conversation about the upcoming summer, and Paul ordered dessert. 

“We’ve got some big news, but we don’t want to commit to anything before we talk to you.”

Percy looked up, chips in hand. “What’s going on?” 

“Nothing, yet, but if everyone agrees then we’ll start looking at options. I’ve been offered a teaching position up in Port Chester for next year, and I think I’ll be taking it.”

His mom spoke next. “It’d be enough of a commute that we’d ideally move into a house there, but we aren’t looking at anything concrete until everyone’s on board.”

“Are you kidding? That’s great!” Percy had been to Port Chester once in his life, when he and Annabeth and his mom stopped for gas on the way to Westover Hall. It

“We’d have to leave the apartment, of course, but I could have a real office, and there’d be so much room. Besides, if we have a house, you and Annabeth will have something bigger than that hole in the wall to come home to during college.”

“I mean, I like the apartment, but a house would be a lot easier to deal with, and it sounds like you and Paul would be a lot happier with it.”

“Annabeth?” His mom asked.” “What do you think?”

“It’s not really my decision, I mean...”

“You’ve practically lived with us for a year and a half; I think you get a say.”

Her face went red, and she squeezed Percy’s hand under the table. “Well, it sounds like a good move, and having more room is never a bad thing.”

Paul clapped his hands. “Then it’s settled! We’ll start looking at listings next week.”

It struck Percy then that, for the first time since he was fifteen, he wasn’t dreading the upcoming summer. He’d fully expected to die on his sixteenth birthday. The next year, his memory came back just in time for him to realize that, as per usual, June through August would be spent trying not to get killed. But now? Here he was thinking about graduating from high school, and helping his parents move house, and college with Annabeth. Was any of this real? Was he stuck in Tartarus, about to wake up from some torturous dream where he was actually enjoying his life? He tried a scoop of salsa. The stuff burned like the Styx, and would’ve woken him up from a dead coma. _Definitely not dreaming._ Here he was, with the best people in the world, eating nachos in paradise. This _was_ really happening, thank the gods, and, for once, he didn’t look over his shoulder. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from a track off the newest (I think) Mors Principium Est album.


	10. The Way It Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is done a little ahead of schedule, which gives me more time to work on the next few chapters. As we progress, events will take place over a longer span of time than has been the standard. The groundwork is now laid for a larger story, which I'm looking forward to writing.

Annabeth 5

“Sorry, sweetie, I think I’m going to have to cut it. It’s all so uneven.”

“Really?”

“I’m afraid so.” Sally sighed. “It’s burned a good halfway up in places.”

“Well, fuck.” Annabeth took in a ragged breath, trying to focus on literally anything but the stench of charred hair that filled the Jacksons’ little restroom. She could have kicked herself. She was _supposed_ to be better than this. Smarter, less of a burden. But here she was, thankful that she hadn’t gotten her and Percy killed. _Gods damn it!_

She felt a hand on her shoulder. In the mirror, Sally’s brow furrowed. “I don’t have to, we can try washing it out, but-“

“No. If it’s burned then it’s got to go. It’s just…”

A moment of silence. “It’s alright” The hand squeezed, thumb rubbing little circles into her back. “You can tell me about it if you want.”

“I messed up, Mrs. J-“

“Sally, honey. You know what my name is.”

“Well, I messed up. I’ve been dodging monsters for ten years, and I let my guard down. Almost got us both killed, and now I look like I start fires for fun.” Her voice cracked, and she felt tears coming on.

Sally didn’t reply right away. Just grabbed her shoulders and turned Annabeth around on the barstool she sat on. Held her close and let her cry.

“You came back, Annabeth. I’ll admit the prospect of you and Percy in danger isn’t one I like to dwell on, but, if I must, I’m glad to be doing it with you very much alive.”

Realizing she’d soaked Sally’s shirt, Annabeth sat up. Blinked hard, trying to dry her eyes. Sally did it for her, and pulled her close again. “Thanks.”

The older woman smiled, that same careworn expression she’d had when she first saw Percy and Annabeth on the couch, that night they’d come back from the war. “Of course, sweetheart. Now here, let’s see about this hair.”

Annabeth kept her eyes closed the whole time. She heard scissors snipping and Sally’s absentminded humming, felt the mild tugging that always accompanied a haircut. She couldn’t bring herself to look. The alternative was hardly better. Without anything for her eyes to process, all she could do was relive the last three hours. Somehow, that was preferable to watching what was left of her ruined locks fall to the bathroom floor.

The night had begun well enough. Sally had helped her change into the dress that now sat crumpled, half-burned, and soaked in the bathtub. The thin slate-grey number had looked more at home in the ballroom at a corporate gala than at a prom, but, were it not burned, she could’ve worn it for anything formal. She had actually put on makeup for once, but not more than the minimum she thought she could get away with, before Paul dropped her and Percy off at Mugello’s. The place was apparently a perennial favorite among prom-goers. Her lasagne had been better than good, as had the bite of Percy’s tenderloin she tried. They capped off the meal with a shot of limoncello each, which Percy managed to buy off the waiter for an extra few dollars in loose bills. It’d gone down smooth, like a glass of liquid gelato. The prom itself was pretty forgettable, aside from the fact that Percy was there. They’d had a few nice slow-dances, even though she stepped on his toes at least three times. Where that boy had learned to waltz, she had no idea, but she enjoyed herself more than she had expected to.

Trouble had been decent enough to wait until after she and Percy left the dance. They skipped out an hour early after one of the football players lost his dinner at half-court, and had been looking for a late-night snack before grabbing a cab back to the apartment when the basilisks attacked. It was their first monster encounter since the plane to Hawaii, and all was going well until one of the snakes set the hem of her dress on fire as she impaled its friend with her dagger. The flames rushed up her back, thankfully burning only the outside of her dress, but her hair lit off as she tried to smother the flames against the alley wall. Percy soaked her with water drawn from a nearby puddle, ruining what was left of her outfit and making them both smell like rotten eggs. They made it home in tatters, one of her shoes ruined from kicking a snake in the teeth and his jacket half-burned away. He’d been distracted by her dress catching fire, and a snake managed to set him aflame as well. He hadn’t been hurt, thanks to some quick thinking and the rest of the puddle, but that wasn’t the point. Had she been faster, less catastrophically clumsy, the worst they’d have had was some dirt on their shoes. Now, she was sitting above a puddle of shower water, wrapped in a bath towel and wondering when she’d feel like something other than hammered shit.

“Annabeth?” Sally’s voice cut through the vision of a snake the length of her arm setting her on fire.

“Oh, sorry. Lost in my head, I guess.”

“Have a look.” And Annabeth did, blinking salt from her eyes and staring at her reflection. Her hair, once a mass of golden curls extending halfway down her back, now fell well above her shoulders. Sally had done better than she had any right to expect, and, unfamiliarity aside, she actually didn’t mind the length.

“I had to go higher than I wanted to,” Sally was murmuring, “but this way it’ll grow back more consistently.”

“This is… yeah, this is way better.” What else could she say? _Thanks for not kicking me out after I almost got your son killed?_ Not that Sally would do that, but she’d be well within her rights to after tonight. “Where’d you learn to cut hair?”

“Had a college friend who taught me. She said buying me wine was cheaper than the salon. Then Percy came along, and cutting his hair myself meant I didn’t need to pay a barber.”

Annabeth tried to relax, to get her shoulders to stop quivering. None of this was ideal, but if she had to walk around with short hair, at least it looked like it was meant to be short. “Thanks. It really does look nice, I just have to get used to it.”

“Here, if you style it like this,” Sally muttered, running a hand through what was left of Annabeth’s bangs, “it’ll look like you just walked out of the Sixties”

And it did. Freed from the weight of its length, Annabeth’s hair curled itself into something she’d have been amazed to do on her own. “You know,” she said, “I might just keep it like this.”

“Don’t feel like you have to, dear. But you look good.”

“Better than I feel, anyway.”

“Give it time, and some food. I’m guessing you and Percy didn’t eat after the dance?”

“No. Got jumped while we were looking for something to eat, actually.”

Percy’s mom set her scissors down, one hand on Annabeth’s arm. “Here, want to get something delivered?”

The offer surprised her. Pizza, at this time of night?“Um… sure, if that’s OK with you.”

“Paul and I had leftovers, and that was hours ago. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving!”

With Sally off ordering pizza, Annabeth was left to return to the bedroom. She opened the door to find Percy, halfway dressed in the faded blue jeans he preferred for lounging around in. He opened his arms as soon as he saw her, and she fell into them. He was warm, and dry, and so gods-damned _safe_ that she felt the anger at herself boil back over. Here he was, holding her and trying his best to calm her down, and all she could do was think about how she’d almost gotten him killed. She didn’t want to say anything, so she just lay there, slowly soaking his shirt. His hands worked around her back and pulled her in tight, like he didn’t care about almost getting incinerated. And, she realized, he didn’t. Didn’t blame her for any of it, or why would he be letting her cry into his shoulder?

“I like your hair.” She felt rather than heard his voice, so close was she to him.

“Your mom did a good job. Glad you don’t mind it short.”

“It’s your hair, Beth, it’ll be nice it no matter what!”

She didn’t reply, just sighed and relaxed her shoulders. He stayed tense, though. She could feel the stress in his core, his arms, and it seemed altogether mismatched with what he’d just said.

“Hey, you doing alright?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just… worried, I guess.”

“What about?”

“I put the whole plane thing out of my mind, because it was the first attack in a long time. Had to have one happen sometime. But now? Two of them, in two months? What’ll the next one be, a chimera in the gym when we graduate?”

“I don’t think there’s much we can do about that, Percy.” He’d never really been bothered by attacks like this before. What was going on, for that to have changed?

“We could. It’s probably not too late to swap schools, if we really want to. Like, yeah, New Rome would suck to live in, but it’d be safe.”

“Do you want to?” Annabeth hadn’t even thought about the place in a few weeks, other than to wonder how Jason and the other Romans were faring. But Percy had always been more receptive to the idea. He wasn’t the type to forgo hardship if it meant protecting the people close to him, and she could sense him returning to that same train of thought as he spoke.

“No. It’d be a hard four years, and I don’t think we’d enjoy it at all. But it would be the safest thing to do.”

“For the record, I think you’re right.” They _would_ be safer behind the walls at New Rome. But would that safety be worth living somewhere they’d more than likely want nothing more than to leave? A vision of Calypso on her stupid little island flashed in Annabeth’s mind, and she brushed it aside. It was a decent metaphor, but still.

He sighed, as if he was hoping she wouldn’t say that. “So, do we-“

“No.” Annabeth shook her head. “I’m tired of wondering what’s around the next corner, same as you. But we’re demigods, Percy. We can’t run from one half of our lives to protect ourselves from the other.”

He didn’t reply for a few minutes, but he didn’t pull away, and Annabeth called that a success. He was at least listening, and not trying to decide for both of them. Not that he was the type of person to do that, but people did unusual things when they were scared. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke. “You’re right, and we both know it. What happened earlier just scared me more than usual.”

“Any reason why?” The attack itself hadn’t been pretty, but they’d survived worse. _Like being tossed out of a plane, for example._

“I turned around in that alley, and you were _burning_ , and I-“ His voice broke. He didn’t cry so much as groan, grit his teeth, and exhale like he’d taken a hard fall, but it was more emotion than she’d seen him show since the _Argo II_. “Ever since Mount Saint Helens, fire scares the hell out of me. It’s stupid, it shouldn’t, but it does. When I saw you, all I could think about was being on fire and not being able to put it out.”

Annabeth felt her breath catch in her throat. It all made sense, now that she thought about it. If there was one thing a son of Poseidon would fear, it’d be fire, and not being easily harmed by heat and flame didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell. She’d seen the burn scars he had from when the volcano lit off, and, without his mentioning them, had assumed that they didn’t especially bother him. She was suddenly at a loss for what to do. Percy usually handled fear with action, whether it was taking a walk after a bad dream or sitting up late and doing something to distract himself. He almost never expressed things out loud, which she didn’t think was all that healthy, but his usual methods seemed to work well enough. So she mirrored what he did when she cried. Ran one hand through his hair, while the other one slipped into the small of his back. They sat like that, him sitting in her lap, for long enough that Annabeth’s back started aching, but she didn’t move. He wouldn’t have. Eventually, he moved to sit next to her, one of her hands in his.

“You OK?” She asked.

“I will be. Thanks for… for that.”

“Of course; I love you.” He smiled at that, the same grin he’d had when they got tossed in the canoe lake the summer before last. She grabbed his chin, pulling him forward for a kiss.

“Love you too,” she mumbled, just loud enough for him to hear. Then she sat back. “Listen. If you’re dead set on New Rome, then…” She sighed. She _did not_ want to live there, to be the outcast just like always. But was that a bigger sacrifice than they would be making if they stayed in the mortal world, and lived with the danger of dying at any given moment? She didn’t think so, but, then again, she couldn’t guarantee that she’d be alive to do much thinking if they kept up this one-monster-a-month crap. “Then I’ll go. I won’t like it, but I can live with it.”

“No.” He shook his head, emphatic and sure. “No. Like you said, we’re not running away from half our lives. I never should’ve brought it up.”

“It was worth talking about, and now we know we’re sure. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Annabeth stood up, offering a hand. “Now come on, I’m hungry as hell and I can smell pizza.”

Pizza proved to be pretty damn necessary. A slice of pepperoni-and-banana-pepper pie killed the headache she’d felt coming on since stumbling through the door, and a second one made her forget she’d ever been hungry. They watched a late ball game as they ate, the Red Sox in Anaheim. Percy seemed more upbeat than usual, like he was free from something that had been hanging around in his head. Maybe their talk about New Rome had finally convinced him that he didn’t want to give up a decent time at school in the name of safety. He’d already decided that, and had said so more than once, but the question had clearly stuck with him. Now, they’d both agreed, they would lose more than they gained if they chose the easy and safe route. So mortal school it would be.

Annabeth got a few questioning looks when she sat down in first-period Civics class on the Monday after prom, but she’d started to rather like her haircut. It made her hair feel light and out-of-the-way, and she never found herself putting it up. Everyone who asked seemed to buy her explanation that she “wanted to try a different style,” and, while the average girl here was probably more likely to eat slugs than openly insult someone’s looks, most of them seemed to genuinely like it. The weeks wound away, and brought with them too much work, but she managed. Even when final exams crested the horizon like a particularly ugly island, the thought that these would be the last non-college exams she ever took was enough to give her strength. “Just two more weeks” became a mantra, something to mumble in the restroom when she stared at her backpack full of assignments hanging on the stall door.

Paying any attention at all became a struggle once half of Annabeth’s teachers announced that any seniors in their classes could forgo final exams if they wanted to keep their grades as they were. She was happy enough with her grades, so, blessedly, a good fraction of her study plans went out the window. All she really had to worry about were AP exams, but those were so standardized that she could literally read old test questions in class and have some idea of what to expect. So, instead of staring at a textbook, she went outside. If there was one advantage of living in California or at Camp, she’d learned, it was the perpetual good weather. New York winter meant that, between Christmas and Easter, she’d been outside as little as possible. The city’s concrete canyons funneled wind down the streets and into Goode’s semi-protected courtyard, making the dash between classes a frigid affair. She’d gotten lazy over the winter. The school had a small indoor track, but the athletes took it over during any of the times she might have used it, and she really didn’t relish trying to do laps in the dry, hot air that a set of huge vents gushed directly onto the back straight. Now, she could run in Central Park, or take the train to Battery Park with Percy and walk out to the southern tip of Manhattan. The breaks from four apartment walls were necessary, and they killed time faster than reading or cooking. The exercise made her drop five pounds in a month, which only went to show how little she’d been doing, but the fact that she could comfortably _lose_ weight instead of fighting to get it back like she’d done for most of last fall was a good sign. She felt stronger, leaner, more prepared, even though she knew that running was hardly the sword arena. It wasn’t perfect training, but it would serve.

The last week of school might as well not have happened. With AP exams done with and half her finals cancelled, it was all Annabeth could do to not fall asleep in class. At least her teachers didn’t care if she read a book during the three-hour blocks of time when they were supposed to be taking tests. The exams she did have to take were over and done with by Thursday, and, while she had to beat her head against the wall on one last paper for her econ class, everything went about as well as it could’ve. Percy, to her surprise, was actually taking more time than her to study. He complained, of course, and she joined in, but neither of them ended up with anything below the B-minus he clawed out in his pre-calculus course.

The last Friday in May started off cold, cloudy, and all-around disappointing. For the first few seconds after waking up, Annabeth swore they’d traveled back to March, complete with window-rattling gusts and crappy weather. She dragged herself out of bed anyway, wanting to grab the hot water before Percy and the other hundred tenants could use it. She really couldn’t wait until Sally and Paul moved into a real house, with its own heater and enough space in the bathroom to actually take a bath. They’d toured a few houses in Port Chester over the last month and a half, before Sally and Paul settled on a three-bedroom Colonial Revival, built at the end of a street and surrounded by hedges.

It had a backyard, with enough room for a grill and a sizable patio, and she and Percy would have a room with some actual space. But that was all in the future. For now, there was one more day of school to get through. Things began auspiciously enough when her German teacher (she regretted not taking an Italian course after learning about the half-blood enclave in Sicily, but German was the school’s main language program and she liked the language) brought in some cold cuts and rolls, which they ate alongside steaming mugs of coffee before starting their written exams. Since school was meant to finish just before noon, they only had time for one extended class period, and the final took up an hour of that time. As a result, when Annabeth handed her completed answer-sheet across Herr Braumann’s desk and shook his hand, she found herself with a half hour to kill. Percy’s history class wouldn’t be done until the last minute, so she took one last walk around the school. She’d miss it, even if she was looking forward to being done there. The hallways were empty, with most students still in their classrooms, and she heard every step she took echo off the walls and floor as she made a long circuit of the academic building, then took the outdoor stairs down to the football field. They’d graduate on that gridiron tomorrow, if the weather held, and it seemed like it would. The sun was out, and, aside from the wet sidewalks and bleachers, she wouldn’t have known that it had rained.

“Hey!” She turned at the sound of Percy’s voice, and saw him striding down the same stairs she’d just taken. “You finished too?”

“Yeah, just got done. How was your last test?”

“Fine, I think. I still hate essays, but whatever, it’s done. We’re done!” He grinned, a full-face smile she couldn’t help but mimic.

“Thank the gods!” She said, and grabbed his hand. “Now it’s just waiting for grades.”

They walked down the concrete path, skirting the field and heading towards the front of the school. “I’m just amazed I didn’t fail anything,” Percy said, watching students begin to exit the building.

“I’m not. You worked harder than me!”

Well, if you say so.” They stopped by the main doors, just off the stairs that were now full of seniors heading for the subway or the bus stop.

“So, this is the way it ends.” Annabeth turned to look at Goode’s brick-and-glass facade, at the windows gleaming in the late-morning sunlight.

“What do you mean? We’re back here tomorrow for graduation!” Percy had turned around as well, and seemed to be giving the school the same long last look as she was.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t count. No class or anything.”

“Guess you’re right. Just weird to think about.”

“Well, we had to graduate sometime.”

“Honestly, for a while I wasn’t sure I would. Thought I’d be monster bait or a dropout way before now.”

She put an arm around him. He was too tall for her to get around his shoulders, so she settled for his waist. “I’m just glad we did it together. All of it.” From this moment, to the flaming aftermath of the school dance, to the holidays, to Tartarus and Rome and beyond, all the way back to that first wonderful kiss beneath the canoe lake, she wouldn’t have wanted to go through any of it without him right by her side. It struck her then, as it did every once in a while, that they were closer than ever to an actual future together. College was on the other side of summer, one which wouldn’t, gods willing, be interrupted with another save-the-world quest. And after that? Who could say. She had no idea what was coming, but they’d face it together. Arm-in-arm, just like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from the band Currents' album of the same name. I don't listen to much metalcore, but this is rather good as the genre goes. The album's cover art (I take credit for none of it, obviously, I just find the music/title/art relevant and so reference it) is also pertinent to the start of an arc that's just, in some sense, come to an end. This is far from the end of our story, and there's plenty more to come. I don't know how many chapters this will take to finish, but the ending is already written and the challenge is getting to it in a way that's satisfactory. That's far in the future, though, and there's miles to go. Thanks for reading.


	11. Consequence of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11 chapters in already, and it's only taken... six months? How the time does fly.

Percy 6

The seating was arranged by last name, which wasn’t a problem for any other reason than because Percy had no friends whose last names began with I or J. Sitting with a bunch of strangers for an hour and a half was far from the worst thing that could’ve happened today, though. He’d expected trouble from the moment he, Annaneth, and his parents arrived at Goode. Monsters _loved_ messing with events like this. Huge crowds meant they could conceal themselves in plain sight, and, after the airplane incident, he had no intention of letting his guard down. Not having anyone to talk with made that easy, since no one would care if he spent the whole ceremony scanning the crowd like a Secret Service agent. Because of the almost-perfect weather, Goode was holding its graduation outdoors, with all the seniors in folding chairs on the football field and spectators in the bleachers. The noise from the stage set up in one end zone were easy enough to tune out, and, without Annabeth sitting next to him, he didn’t have to pretend to pay attention. One speech would’ve been fine. Two? A stretch, but sure. Graduating was a big deal, after all. But the murderer’s row of students, teachers, minor administrators, and the principal, all with at least ten minutes’ worth of remarks, was enough to get at least one person in Percy’s row snoring. He almost joined them, but, after 90 long minutes, the band struck up _Pomp and Circumstance_. He swore half the people in earshot mumbled “thank God” or something similar when the first row of students rose, turned, and marched to the stage. Annabeth stood out immediately, even with her hair cut short. She made the cap-and-gown look good. It fit her, for one. His was just a little too long, and the dewy grass had already soaked the hem. He followed her progress toward the stage, since he couldn’t actually see the person handing out diplomas. The center of the basketball team sat right in front of him, and looking past him was impossible unless Percy stood up or leaned over into his neighbor’s lap. He did end up standing when Annabeth got to the front of the line, just so he could see her walk the stage, and he joined in the modest cheering she got when her name was announced.

His turn came ten minutes later. The stage was slick, thanks to the parade of students who’d walked across it in shoes damp from the morning dew. He watched the girl in front of him step forward for her diploma and almost lose her footing, which would’ve been funny for everyone but her. Then the principal was announcing his name, and he stepped forward. Took the thick, faux-leather-bound folder containing his diploma, shook a few hands, and walked off the stage. And that was it. Ten seconds, and he was done with high school. He’d expected to feel the moment more. There’d been a time not so long ago when he wasn’t sure that graduating, or even surviving the year, was a sure thing. Now, it wasn’t a problem anymore. More than anything, he was relieved. He found his way back to his seat, half-hearing the announcer over the PA as they worked their way down the alphabet. Once he sat down, he opened the folder. His diploma was tucked into one side. He’d pull it out later, though he knew his mom would want to have it framed. She’d probably kill him if he so much as got dirt on it, so he shut the folder and set it on his lap.

After another fifteen minutes of diploma-dispensing, a visibly tired principal waved his hands, and a hundred for so hats rose aloft. Percy tossed his just enough to get some air under it, but not high enough to lose in the mass of airborne mortarboards. That was another thing he’d get in trouble for getting soiled. The crowd of students dispersed, shouting and whooping and seeking out friends and family. Percy headed for the stage, hoping to find Annabeth, but he took his time. It was pretty likely that he’d never see some of his friends again after today, so he stopped and talked with a few of the swim team guys. Annabeth must’ve been doing the same with her friends, because he only found her ten minutes after the ceremony broke up.

“Ready to go?” she asked, grabbing his free hand. “Ought to meet your parents.”

“Yeah, let’s.” She led the way, almost pulling him down the tunnel leading out of the stadium. “Hey, what’s the rush?”

“Probably best if we get going before everyone else decides to, or traffic’ll be even worse.” They hurried up, leaving the stadium behind. Annabeth finally stopped, pointing down the sidewalk. “There they are!”

“Wait.” Percy squeezed her hand. She held up.

“Forget something?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her, arms moving on their own to pull her in. He felt her lean in, pushing them off the sidewalk and against a tree. They broke off, and Percy had to stop to catch his breath. “Wish I could’ve done that on stage.”

“What, in front of everyone?” She smiled, impish and narrow-eyed. “Gods, you really are a hopeless romantic.”

“Guilty. But I don’t see you complaining.”

“Who said I was? It’s cute. You’re cute.”

“Makes two of us.” She blushed, and Percy figured he was probably doing the same thing. It was time to go, before one of them started melting.

Once hugs and congratulations were exchanged, Paul led the way towards the faculty lot. As they rounded the maintenance building and approached the car, he stopped.

“Wait, who parked this thing?” Paul scowled. Some asshole had pulled his plum-purple Corvette’s chromed bumper within an inch of his car. He leaned down, peeking through the car’s window, then froze. “Hey, Percy, come look at this!”

“What’s up?” Percy looked into the Stingray’s interior. It was absolutely pristine, which, for a car this old, was amazing. The black leather seats looked like they’d just left the factory, as did the convertible roof.

“Look in there.”

He looked, and his jaw dropped. A sheet of cream-white paper, like the kind his diploma was printed on, sat on the passenger seat. Someone had scrawled “Safe Travels- Uncle Z” in blue ink, ending the “Z” with a little lightning-bolt flourish. A pair of keys on a steel ring weighted the paper down.

“Holy shit.”

“Did who I think left that note actually leave that note?” Paul asked.

"Only one way to find out.” Percy tried the driver’s door. It opened, smooth and quiet on its hinges. He reached in, and picked up the keys and paper. It was blank on the other side, but the weight, quality, and mild static shock he got when he touched it were enough to confirm his suspicions. Had Zeus really sent him a car _?_ And a _Corvette_ , of all things? What in Hades was going on?

His stepdad tapped him on the shoulder. “Look what I found,” he said, holding a packet of papers. “Your name’s on the title, and the insurance company’s based out of the Empire State Building.” He laughed, a little uneasily.

“Guess Zeus really doesn’t want you flying anymore.” Annabeth stood across the car’s long, sharp hood from them, eyebrows halfway up her forehead.

“Must not.” Percy sat in the driver’s seat, hanging his legs out of the car. He had to watch out so as not to kick the chromed exhaust pipes positioned below the door. Of all the things to happen today, this was not one he’d had in mind. _Eurynomos_ on the field during graduation? Sure. Surprise visit from Apollo? Maybe. Certainly possible. But the king of the gods telling him to stay off his turf, and saying it with a 1969 Corvette and a nice letter? Had someone slipped crazy pills into his Cheerios?

“Well, you gonna drive it?” Annabeth asked, one hand on the door handle.

“We’ve got to get it home somehow, but where can we park it?” His mom asked. She looked as confused as the rest of them, so at least Percy wasn’t alone in how he felt.

“Wait,’” Paul said, “we can put it at the house until we move in; that’s only a few days. And there’s a garage.”

Plan of action decided, they split up and set off. Annabeth rode with Percy, who had to adjust the seat and mirrors before shoving the clutch pedal to the floor, throwing the shift lever into reverse, and firing the engine. It came to life with a rush of _pops_ and _bangs,_ which became a throaty growl as he gave it a little gas. Letting the clutch out, he backed up so Paul could exit his parking space, then followed him away from the school. The car felt light and twitchy, like it had a mind of its own and he was just giving it suggestions. He’d driven Paul’s M3 on these streets before, but this was a completely different experience. The German car was smooth and planted, designed for precision cornering. This was a growly, shouty animal, begging him to plant his foot and leave a trail of smoking rubber behind him. He tried the accelerator, easing into the power as he left a stoplight, and had to let off the pedal before he blew through the next one.

“Well, what’s it like?” Annabeth asked, gazing out the windshield and grinning as he eased to a stop.

“Feels like a rocket ship!” He dropped the clutch and revved the engine, startling a few pigeons from their perch on a sidewalk newspaper stand. “Good gods, this thing is cool!”

“Wonder what the catch is,” she mused. “Bursts into flame if you put it in fourth?”

“Nah. Probably more along the lines of, “if you step on a plane again I zap your ass. Along with everyone else on board.”

She nodded. “Well, guess we’ll be driving a lot more.” Looking forward again, she leaned back in her seat. “There are worse fates.”

“Yeah, he could’ve sent me a Ford Pinto.”

Leaving the Corvette at the new house proved to be a good idea, because moving the rest of their things there took up any time Percy might have had to drive it. It took two trips in a U-Haul to convey the furniture, boxes, and other assorted remnants of years spent in the little apartment. In the process of cleaning out his room, he found three lost textbooks, six orphaned socks that he (probably) had matches for in the back of his dresser, and a Camp t-shirt he swore he’d left in his cabin. All of that was packed away, which was a better fate than the piles of old school papers, receipts, and general detritus got. Carrying boxes of kitchenware out to the elevator, then to the street in front of the building’s revolving doors, did a number on his back and legs, but the work was satisfying. After all, they’d have much more room to put all this stuff in when it got to the house. Percy hadn’t ever imagined that he’d be helping his mom move into anything other than a different apartment, or maybe a townhouse in the kinda-nice part of the Bronx at most. And now here he was, dragging a duffel bag full of Paul’s novels up the moving truck’s rear ramp, hoping he didn’t slip and fall. Then again, he hadn’t imagined having a girlfriend, or his mom getting remarried, or even making it through school either, so he decided he couldn’t be too surprised.

If moving out was hard, moving in was somewhere between mildly difficult and annoying. Having more room to put things inevitably meant that some stuff got misplaced, even within hours of bringing it inside. After a full afternoon of dragging boxes and bedframes up the porch stairs, though, Percy could safely say that his and Annabeth’s room was shipshape. The house had three bedrooms, but his mom and Paul had told them to take the guest room and leave the third, smaller one for use as an office. He’d been a little surprised, given that him and Annabeth sharing wasn’t strictly a necessity anymore, but there was no point in ruining a good thing, so he agreed. Besides, they had such a nice view of the backyard that he honestly liked their room. He’d never had a backyard before, and the novelty still wasn’t gone after a week of sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs and sipping on lemonade. There was novelty elsewhere too, from the sheer amount of space in the house to the solidity its walls and wooden floors conveyed. Apartment sheetrock was thin and papery compared to the stuff lining his and Annabeth’s room, and they had stairs! Actual, literal stairs, between different floors that they owned. Percy supposed that this wasn’t at all abnormal for most people, but, for him, it was. The other big show was that the pipes rattled. They never did that in the apartment, probably because they were built to a stronger design, but now, whenever he or Annabeth turned on the shower in their little bathroom, anyone downstairs heard a faint _clunking_ noise. It wasn’t bothersome enough to fix, but it made knowing when the bathroom was free easy. And so he grew used to his new home, and the relative ease of suburban living. Most importantly, he didn’t _do_ anything. Explored the town, or drove up to Connecticut with Annabeth, sure, but he didn’t go looking for trouble, and he certainly didn’t try to join up on any quests. News about the Italian version of Camp was slow to come in, which he didn’t mind. Annabeth was annoyed that no one was bothering to check it out more closely, but she wasn’t in a hurry to go overseas again any time soon.

One rainy Wednesday in mid-June found them sitting in their room, Annabeth at the desk reading about something on her laptop while Percy watched old F1 videos. He was halfway through a set of highlights from the previous year’s Japanese Grand Prix when Annabeth startled him.

“Wait, how the hell are we rooming together?” She looked up from her computer, swiveling in the old office chair. “That never happens.”

Percy glanced over. “What do you mean?”

“Check your e-mail.”

He did, and there was his room assignment. Moses Hall, fourth floor, room 31B. Roommate’s name, Annabeth Chase. _Now how’d that happen?_ Sure, they’d applied to share a room, but the chances of actually getting your application approved were apparently close to nil. The school even said so on the form.

“We applied for the same room, and the dorm’s co-ed. I guess it makes sense. Besides, I’m not gonna complain.”

“Yeah, true. It’s just weird, I’ve never heard of it happening.”

“You know what they say about gift horses.”

“Not to get bit?” Annabeth grinned, looking way too innocent for what Percy knew she was implying. She’d gotten good at only leaving marks where they wouldn’t be seen, but he felt himself flush red anyway.

“Well, it’s nice sometimes…” She shut him up with a kiss, one hand cradling his jaw, and Percy was suddenly very glad for the new house and its thick walls.

Summer began to drag around a month in. Even with occasional weekends at Camp and plenty of time spent cleaning up the new house, Percy found himself with more spare time than he knew what to do with. Annabeth spent plenty of time up on Olympus working on designs, so he ended up familiarizing himself with Port Chester. Living in a suburb was weird. His neighborhood was maybe a half mile from “downtown,” which was really a few blocks of restaurants and businesses, but most people drove to get there. The locals walked for exercise, or to enjoy the weather, not because it was cheaper than the subway. He’d hadn’t been back to the City since moving out, and he found himself missing it less and less. The restaurants were better in the city, of course, but here he could get a burger and fries for half the price of anything sold in Manhattan. Well, McDonalds still cost the same, but it also tasted the same. So, to the little diner next to the bowling alley he went. They wouldn’t let under-21s sit at the bar, so he and Annabeth usually got a corner table on Saturdays and watched the Yankees game.

Percy’s first trip back to the City only happened because he, Annabeth, and his parents had to pass through the Bronx to get to Montauk. They’d been so busy with moving and settling in and getting ready for college (what kind of school assigned reading in the summer when you didn’t even attend class yet?) that it took Annabeth’s birthday to convince them that they could take a summer vacation. None of them had been to a beach since Hawaii, and, as nice as their tree-lined street was, getting away couldn’t hurt. Much as he’d wanted to take the Corvette, the old car drank gas like Dionysus drank diet cola, and he didn’t feel like getting a summer job just to pay for the upkeep. It was just like Zeus to give him something that was a total pain in the ass to use, but could he have expected anything else? And, for all its quirks, the car _was_ helpful. He’d been able to drive out to Camp one day while Annabeth worked on Olympus and pick up her birthday gift. Paying a Hephaestus kid a pile of drachmas to make something so he didn’t have to go shopping was becoming a habit, but he didn’t see any problem with it. She got something she’d be almost guaranteed to like, and he didn’t have to hunt around a store for something he couldn’t pay for in gold. In this case, he’d commissioned a bronze-and-steel watchband for the little automatic her dad sent her as a graduation present. As nice as it was, the factory leather band wouldn’t handle water or monsters all that well.

Montauk in July was always a treat, and having something to celebrate only improved the time spent there. After vanquishing the single _eurynomos_ that came shambling along the dunes an hour into their stay, all anyone had to do was sit on the beach and watch the waves come in. This they did, before grilling out in the evenings and watching the sunsets flood the sky. The whole trip felt easy, unlike when they’d gone last summer. That had been fun, but Percy didn’t like to dwell on it. He’d been paranoid and on-edge, despite the brave face he put on, and Annabeth? How she’d gone from waking up screaming three times a night and walking around in high-collared shirts to cover the drakon-claw scar on her neck to sipping on gin-and-tonics in a bikini he had to stop himself from staring at, he had no idea. The wound was still there. It ran down between her collarbones, a pale shallow rift in what was, otherwise, nearly flawless skin. But she’d stopped letting it bother her. She was happier now, and, reasons be damned, that was the important thing.

The moonlight was just enough to see by. It lit up the shore, and cast long shadows in the dunes. Percy groaned. As nice as the view was, it was a poor substitute for sleep. He’d been sitting out on the porch for the last hour, after waking up from another Tartarus dream. The nightmares were getting rarer. Time hadn’t diminished their intensity, but having fewer of them was a blessing regardless.

“Not going to bed?”

Percy turned, startled. Paul stood in the doorway, wearing a set of swim trunks and a polo shirt. He held a tumbler in one hand and a bottle of something amber and alcoholic in the other.

“I did, for a while. Dreams woke me up, and if I try and sleep for the next hour or so I’ll just stare at the ceiling.” He yawned. “Not worth the trouble.”

His step-dad nodded, seeming to understand. “Yeah, I see the problem.” He padded to the other chair, sitting down and setting the glass and bottle on the table between them. “Here, want a few fingers?”

Percy looked down, studying the bottle. The stylized lettering blended together, and he had to squint to get them to line up. “Glen....far-close?”

“Glenfarclas. Good scotch. Your mother bought me a bottle for Father’s Day, and I figured I’d have a glass.”

“Don’t think she’ll mind?”

Paul shook his head. “She’d mind if you dug in without asking, but no. In fact, I remember her specifically mentioning buying this kind because it’s what Poseidon enjoyed when they were... together, and she thought you’d have his tastes.”

“Alright, sure.” The idea of his mother buying him hard liquor was strangely comforting. It was something a parent of a normal teenager might do, to make sure he knew his limits before going off to college.

“Glasses are in the tall cabinet.”

Percy stood, grabbed a squat, wide glass for himself, and went back outside. Paul popped the cork, pouring a small amount for Percy and a larger measure for himself.

“Where’s mom?” Percy asked, as he picked up his glass. He swirled the liquid around inside, watching the little waves he created progress around in a languid circle.

“Off showering. She’d join us, but she doesn’t really like scotch. Prefers wine, usually.”

“She didn’t drink anything for years after Gabe. Once I was older I understood why, but for a while I thought she just didn’t like the taste.” He saw Paul stiffen a bit at the mention of his wife’s ex-husband.

“I don’t think I’ve ever told you how glad I am that you solved that particular problem for your mother.” He shook his head, and took a sip of scotch. “When she told me about why she stayed with the man, I was close to demanding to know where he lived so I could go put a bullet in his head, but then she told me about how you helped her... handle him.” Paul grinned, more than a little malice in the curl of his lip.

“That asshole ruined her life for years, and she let him do it for my sake. Giving her the chance to pay him back was the least I could do. Besides, I hear he looks good as a statue.” Percy tried his own drink. He’d had whiskey before, when one of the Stoll brothers snuck a bottle of Jack Daniels past the borders and they’d all added some to their Coke, but this was something else. He’d always been told that scotch tasted like a campfire, but this felt light and mellow, with a taste of molasses and strong wine that lingered in his nose.

“What do you think?” Paul asked, setting his glass down.

“This is good,” Percy replied, trying a second sip. “Way different than I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Way more smoke. That’s how the Stolls always described scotch.”

“The Stolls?”

“Yeah, sons of Hermes. Really nice guys, if you don’t mind them emptying your cabinets.” He smirked. Travis was off in Iowa attending some tiny school in the middle of nowhere, and probably bored to tears, but his dad was paying. How Hermes got away with being that generous to his demigod children, Percy had no clue.

“They probably weren’t drinking speyside, which is what this is. Really mellow stuff, not at all smoky.”

“It’s really good. Guess you and my other dad both have good taste.”

Paul froze, glass halfway to his mouth. Percy raised his eyebrows. “What? It’s true.”

“Percy, I’m just glad you think of me that way.”

“Of course I do. You’re better to my mom than either Poseidon or Gabe ever were, and you don’t flip out over me or Annabeth. It’s... better with you around. Mom’s happier, and things feel way calmer than they ever used to.”

Paul’s face seemed to glow, even in the half-light. Percy had to wonder what growing up with this man around might have been like. Probably not much different once he got to Camp, but certainly better in the time before and between all that. Not having to hide in the closet or dodge beer bottles and the occasional meaty fist would have been an improvement, but he felt like Paul would have gone way beyond just acting as the neutral presence his mom had hoped Gabe would be.

“So,” Percy asked, “What’s the occasion?” Tonight seemed pretty ordinary, and Paul didn’t normally touch anything harder than beer.

“An old friend died today, six years ago.”

Percy blinked. Of all the things Paul might have said, that was the one he least expected. “Oh, erm.. I’m really sorry.” He felt his face flush. “I had no idea.”

Paul surprised him more, by chuckling and reaching for the bottle. Uncorking it, and adding a little of the molasses-like liquid to his glass. “It’s alright. I’ve never mentioned him before. He was an Army buddy of mine, went to Iraq right when the war there got started. His platoon got caught in the open by a machine-gun, and, well, that’s all she wrote.” He let out a long breath, leaning back a little. “We were pretty good friends in Bosnia, did a few stints in the boonies there.”

Percy had only heard of Bosnia from Paul’s stories, and the place sounded hairier than he was comfortable with. “It never really goes away, does it?”

“No. Not at all. I wasn’t even there when he died, and it still bothers me. He was there the one time I got shot at, so…”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.” The kind of battles he fought were decided by sword and spear, but the feeling couldn’t have been all that different. Dying sent you to the same place no matter how you got your ticket punched.

“Shame you’ve got to. I was ten years older than you are now when I went to Bosnia. Couldn’t have done it at seventeen.”

Percy shrugged. The fact that he’d been, for all intents and purposes, a child soldier, had never really bothered him. He wasn’t exactly playing by the same rules as a normal teenager. Was it right that someone too young to die for his country had to face danger for the half of his family that didn’t normally care whether he survived another year? Probably not, but that was just how things were. Always had been, since long before Achilles. It wasn’t fair, but life never was. Not for him, or Annabeth, or anyone else. So why worry about it? “It’s what happened. Nothing I could’ve done but try and stay alive, you know?”

Paul nodded, glasses winking in the moonlight. “Too right.” He tossed off the last of his scotch, swallowing hard. “In any case, let’s both try and avoid getting blown to bits in the foreseeable future. Your mom would kill us both.” They went inside, and Percy felt his legs get heavier with every step. It wasn’t the alcohol, he was pretty sure, because he hadn’t had enough to get drunk. The fact that it was two forty-six in the morning, as told by the stove’s glowing clock, had to be the cause. Careful not to make the hinges squeak, he slipped into the spare bedroom. Annabeth lay half-covered by blankets, limbs splayed around like she’d fallen into bed. He climbed in beside her, one arm coming to rest on her waist. The sheets were soft and cool. The mild tiredness he’d felt earlier was now a very fancy invitation to pass out. He accepted. And, for once, he didn’t have a single dream.


	12. Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had not planned on putting this up so early, but temperatures are so low that all there is to do is sit inside, play Witcher 3, and write. Maybe someday the world will unfreeze. Until then, here we are.

Annabeth 6

It took an hour of lugging her and Percy’s stuff into their dorm room to convince Annabeth that maybe, just _maybe_ , she missed having an elevator. Moses Hall, named for the man who built the Triborough Bridge and the Battery Tunnel, seemed to have been given its title with no regard for the fact that the great urban planner would’ve cringed at how narrow and steep the stairs were. The building was nicer than the New Roman equivalent, in that it looked more modern and gave you more than one thin vertical window, but it still lacked air conditioning. She didn’t mind too much, though, since the view from the top floor was utterly commanding. Enstone College was built on a wide, gentle hill that overlooked Long Island Sound, and Moses Hall overlooked the rest of campus. As such, the New York City skyline was easily visible, and, with a good set of binoculars, she could probably make out Camp if she tried.

Their room was small, as befit a freshman dorm, but the size didn’t make it uncomfortable. The bunk bed was a little small for two people to fit side-by-side, but she and Percy managed. Once they pushed the bed into a corner, there was space for a pair of desks, chairs, and dressers, plus the world’s smallest alcove. There wasn’t much privacy, and the bathroom was down the hall, but at least they had a room to themselves. The food, as they discovered Wednesday night, was actually pretty good. Whoever ran the kitchen didn’t skimp on the vinegar sauce when they made barbecue, to Annabeth’s surprise. Percy seemed content with his pizza, and the fries were a cut above what she’d had at New Rome.

Moving in on a Wednesday meant that the rest of the week before classes began was free, or at least it should’ve. In reality, the school had an extensive orientation scheduled. It started right after breakfast on Thursday with a speech by the school president, a elegantly tall, silver-haired man who introduced himself as Seth Harkin. He kept his remarks brief, to Annabeth’s relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to hear him talk, but she’d had one too many mugs of coffee at breakfast, and sitting in the school’s biggest lecture hall for an hour really wasn’t the best long-term proposition. After the speech finished came an endless series of get-to-know-yous. Each student got assigned an orientation group at random, ostensibly so they’d meet people from outside their dormitory floor. This was fine, but waiting to start activities because someone slept in, or, in one case, decided that college wasn’t for them and went home in the dead of night, got old fast. At least the other students seemed nice. She got approached by at least eight different people recruiting for sororities, clubs, societies, music groups, and majors, and met enough new people that she remembered precisely zero names.

After spending two days in what felt like endless meetings and introductions and seminars, Annabeth finally had a moment to herself. Once dinner on Friday rolled around, orientation gave way to a weekend of blissful, unscheduled freedom. Not that she didn’t have plans, of course, but those would have to wait for Percy to show up. For now, she sat in their dorm room, alone save for her books. The heat was positively oppressive, so she cracked the window open, just enough to let some air in. They were high enough up that she didn’t bother closing the blinds. No one could see inside, unless they climbed up and looked. The building had no air conditioning to speak of, and right now the room was stifling. The open window didn’t do much. The air outside was somehow hotter and more humid. She growled, stripping off her sweat-soaked shirt. That helped some, and pulling everything else off did more. After all, if things went according to plan, it’d be on the floor soon anyway. Percy wasn’t due back from his meeting, an introductory practice that the rowing team was holding, until well after seven. That gave her an hour to sit and do nothing, so she wrapped herself in a towel and reclined on the bed. Her first rental from the school library, a well-worn copy of _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,_ sat on the nightstand. It was a nice break from Stephen King novels, especially since it didn’t weigh a pound and a half. She’d barely started the book, so she picked it up and began to read.

Alec Leamas’ exploits in London and Holland kept Annabeth’s attention so thoroughly that the sound of Percy’s key in the lock startled her. She hurriedly set the book aside, careful to put it somewhere besides the bed. Standing up, she held the towel in place with crossed arms.

Percy froze at the sight of her. “Get too hot in here?” He asked, perplexed.

“Remember what I said about wanting as long as we wanted?” She smiled, remembering that afternoon in his room, back when they’d still lived in the apartment. She’d been so close to throwing caution to the winds, to going way further with him than she’d ever thought possible until that moment, but there hadn’t been time. Now, that wasn’t a problem.

“Um… yeah.” He still looked dumbfounded, like the last thing he’d expected to find on coming back to their room was his girlfriend, wearing nothing but a bath towel and standing in front of the bed. But then she saw the flash of recognition. He knew exactly what she meant, thank the gods.

She uncrossed her arms. The towel dropped away, and she shivered in the cool September air. “We’ve got all weekend. I think that counts.”

When classes did begin, Annabeth had to get used to a totally novel schedule. Enstone ran on a block system, meaning that she took one course for three and a half weeks, and did that four times per semester. It was weird at first, but she wouldn’t have to stay current on work for four classes at once, and, since finals were always on a Wednesday, she invariably had a four-day break between courses. The extra-long weekends seemed like a real morale booster, and, after a week of the hardest architecture course she’d ever taken, she was already looking forward to the time off. When it did come, it arrived with an extra bonus: Nico di Angelo, apparently bored to tears with life in the Underworld, dropped her and Percy a line and asked if he could stop by the college to visit. They invited him, of course, even offering up their top bunk if he wanted it. He declined, saying he had enough to do back “home” that he could only stay for the day. He arrived in Camp’s rickety old pickup, parking it in the guest lot and saying he’d driven instead of shadow-traveling so that he wouldn’t be dead-tired when he arrived. Their first stop was the mess hall, to grab lunch and show Nico around the commons building.

“Does your dad make you go to school?” Percy asked through a mouthful of fries. Annabeth tried to suppress a groan. She was always bugging him about not chewing with his mouth full, and, invariably, he kept doing it. She didn’t care, not really, but some people did, and if he talked like that at lunch with someone who might hire him, he’d _never_ get a job.

“Oh, gods. It’s even worse than that. I’m ‘homeschooled,’ because apparently the mortal schools just aren’t good enough.”

“Who’s your teacher?” Annabeth asked. She had to imagine that some minor goddess did the instructing, because the alternative was a literal skeleton standing in front of a blackboard.

“I don’t have just one, which is kinda cool. I guess. Dad has a bunch of dead smart people come talk to me, or he makes me help them out with whatever they do in the afterlife. I learned about politics from Clausewitz and strategy from Nimitz and Eisenhower, so that was pretty slick.” He brightened, fractionally. “I guess some of it isn’t so bad.”

Annabeth felt a sudden surge of envy. “Any chance you could get me in for a talk with Frank Lloyd Wright?” She asked.

“Who?”

“Philistine.” She grinned.

They decided to walk around campus after lunch. Nico wanted to see the place, so, with no real destination in mind, they left the dining hall and headed down the hill. The sun was out, and late September meant pleasant temperatures with a slight chance of rain. The campus’ main pedestrian route wound down from the commons building, which housed the dining hall, kitchens, post office, campus radio station, and a bunch of meeting rooms, to the Sound’s sandy shore. Academic and administrative buildings flanked the wide flagstone path, which split in two to pass around a pedestal with a statue of an owl perched atop it. The school mascot was a fun little coincidence, and the fact that they had a live great horned owl that flew loops around the stadium at football games was a neat touch. The campus was really nice to walk through, especially once they left the main path and made their way between the engineering and arts buildings and into one of the tree-lined swathes of land that formed the campus borders. Nico caught them up on his life in the Underworld, his time spent with Will, and his continued search for any information about the half-blood enclave he’d found on Sicily.

“I’ve been talking to a few of the people whose names came up in that book you helped Chiron with. Most of them won’t say much, but the ones who did were pretty helpful.”

“What’d they say?” Annabeth had been trying not to think about anything to do with Italy, since it would only end up distracting her, but curiosity won out. They passed between another pair of buildings, heading back towards the main walkway. Nico’s voice echoed off the brick walls as he answered.

“About what we already knew. I-“

“You! Stop!” All three of them froze. Annabeth’s hand shot to her dagger, but she didn’t draw. The shouting man might have been anyone, and pulling a knife on a professor or a campus security guy would make for a lot of Mist-manipulating. She turned, and came face-to-face with a man holding a small automatic pistol.

“The hell do you want?” Percy asked. He had Riptide out, edge catching the light as he pointed it right at a second guy, who’d just stepped out of the shadows. A third man, darker than his friends, approached from the other side of the alley. They were surrounded.

“We seek Nico di Angelo. Hand him over, and we leave as quickly as we came.” The guy spoke with a vaguely European accent, but Annabeth couldn’t place it.

Percy shook his head. “Not happening, asshole.” Annabeth had her knife out, having drawn it as soon as she saw the first gun. Each man looked about thirty, and the one closest to her walked with a slight limp. Was this some weird, targeted mugging? That didn’t make much sense, but stranger things had happened. Was Nico in some kind of trouble?

“I’ll ask nicely,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice level. “What do you want with him?”

The swarthy man raised his pistol, pointing it straight at her. “We only want di Angelo, not the rest of you. No reason for anyone to get hurt.”

Annabeth didn’t move. The guy had her covered, could shoot any time he wanted. How, exactly, was she going to get out of this? She blinked. Shook her head, tried to gather her wits. Then something flashed past her, and the man with the automatic crumpled. She dived aside, lunging at the gunman’s friend. Her dagger pierced leather, then flesh, then lung, slamming to a stop as its hilt met his jacket. Blood, hot and crimson, soaked her hand and wrist. She wrenched the knife free, and the bleeding man spun away. She began to give chase, but saw the third attacker reaching for his friend’s fallen gun. She stepped into his path, leading with her shoulder, and knocked him into the wall. His wind left him with a convulsive _whoof,_ and he staggered back, trying to raise his own weapon. She slashed at his wrist, catching tendons with the tip of her blade, but he jerked back.

“Drop it!” A man’s voice, a familiar one, echoed between the buildings. “Annabeth, cover him!” She did as the voice said, keeping her knife pointed at their assailant’s chest as he threw his pistol to the ground. She picked it up, aiming at the one she’d just hit. In her peripheral vision, she spotted a tall man, silver-haired and slender, striding down the alley.

“President Harkin?” She asked, confused. “What the hell?”

“I saw these guys drive up, start coming after you. Amazing what one finds when they’re out for a stroll.” He extended a hand. “Here. Let’s get this one somewhere quieter.”

She handed him the pistol. Harkin ran the slide back, peering into the ejection port. “Celestial bronze bullets. Figures.”

“Wait.” Percy, sword still out, held up a hand. “You know what celestial bronze is?”

“I’ll explain all, in time. For now, we’ve got to get inside before anyone sees us. There’s an empty storage room behind that door.” He stepped forward, quick and sure, and yanked a thin spear out of the man who’d had a gun pointed at Annabeth. It collapsed into a Swiss Army knife, which he stowed in his pocket.“Now let’s go. Get the bodies inside.”

Percy, Riptide’s point against the stranger’s back, pushed him through the steel door. Annabeth and Nico followed, each dragging a body. The one she’d stabbed was already gone, bled out from the wound between his ribs, and his friend with the spear-puncture had maybe thirty seconds to live.The room they entered resembled a warehouse, boxes and crates stacked high against the walls. “You, against the wall. Go!” Harkin motioned with his pilfered gun, and the stranger staggered forward.

“I’ll have your name now, and your divine parent.”

“I don’t understand, I’m sorry!”

“There’s no sense in lying. I know you’re a half-blood; could smell you and your friends half a mile off. Now _talk.”_

“Fine, fine!” He was almost hyperventilating, and had to force the words out between breaths. “I am… Rico Mondali, son of Tyche.”

“Very good.” President Harkin’s lip curled into a half-smirk. “And what, precisely, are you doing on my campus?”

“Please, sir… it hurts.” He motioned to the wound on his wrist.

“I’ll get you nectar. Got some handy here, as it happens.” The college’s president opened his messenger bag, revealing a steel flask. “It’s yours, after you tell us what you came here to do.”

“I cannot, I swore-“

“Then bleed out, for all I care. No one will find your body, I’ll see to that.” He put the flask away. “It makes no difference to me.”

“Wait.” Annabeth finally asked the question that’d been burning in her mind since Harkin threw a spear by her head. “Sir, what exactly-“

“All in good time, my dear.” Harkin turned back to his prisoner. “Now, as I said. Talk, if you want to live.”

“Okay, okay, fine.” He coughed, and clutched at his ruined arm. His accent, thick and Italian, came through stronger as his voice rose in panicked pitch. “We came… for him.” He pointed at Nico, hand shaking. ”Thought we could take him when he left his camp. Followed him here, and meant to grab him when he was alone.”

“Why?”

“We weren’t told.“

“Lies.” Harkin pulled his pocketknife out, examining it. “You came all the way from, where, Italy? With no idea why you were doing it?” He flicked one of the blades open, and the knife transformed into a three-foot cavalry sword. “I sharpened this last week. I’d counsel you to be more candid, before I’m forced to test the edge.”

The man gulped. “It’s a long story. You must believe, we did not intend the boy any harm.”

“Explain.”

“We were to take him back to Sicily, force him to use the shadows to speed our travel.”

“Wait.” Harkin turned to Nico. “You’re di Angelo?”

Nico’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. How do you know my name?”

“Like I said, all in due time.” He returned his attention to the man in the corner. “For what purpose were you to take him?”

Silence fell, interrupted by the wounded man’s rasping breath. Annabeth watched on, trying to keep her face impassive. She supposed she’d seen weirder things in her life, but the president of her college threatening a strange man with a sword was definitely in the top ten. Finally, after a long minute, the Italian spoke.

“We wanted Di Angelo so that we might, ah, trade him. Spare his life, in exchange for that of another.”

“With whom?”

“Hades. His father.”

“And whose life was his being given in exchange for?” Nico shifted, clearly not happy with the fact that he was being talked about as if he weren’t there.

“Alastor. Or, at least, that is what we were told.”

“Who?” Percy interjected. Annabeth racked her brain, trying to dig up anything she could on the name. It sounded vaguely Christian, but she swore she’d seen it before when she read about different cults of Zeus.

“A minor god, or, more properly, the name of a minor god who has long since faded from prominence.”

Theprisoner laughed. “Faded? No, he lives, in the pit of Tartarus! I have spoken with him myself!”

“And you were to hand Nico over to his father in exchange for, what, Alastor’s release?”

“That was what we were told.”

“And who was in charge of planning this? Alastor himself?”

“No. Luigi Maggiore, a son of Nemesis. He was- is, behind it all.” The stranger went on to explain that Maggiore, a Tuscan wine-maker, had fallen under Alastor’s sway after the erstwhile god of vengeance and feuds found a way to send telepathic messages from the Underworld. Annabeth had no ides how something like that was supposed to work, but guessed that blood-magic probably played a major part. Alastor, convinced that he could gain his corporeal form back if he were allowed to leave the Underworld, demanded that Maggiore assist him by finding a bargaining chip.

“The first plan was to use the Apple of Discord,” he choked out, glaring at Nico. “But that, as _you_ know, failed.” The wounded man sounded weaker, now, and his sleeve was soaked through with blood. “Please, I cannot go on.”

“Drink this,” Harkin spat, tossing the flask into his lap. He gulped it down, pouring golden liquid into his mouth. His pallor disappeared, and Annabeth saw the wound she’d given him begin to knit closed.

“I thank you.”

“You’ll thank me later. Now, please, continue.”

An hour later, Annabeth, Percy, and Nico took seats in the president’s office. Harkin sat behind his desk, an ornately-paneled antique that looked older than the rest of the furniture. He reached into a drawer, withdrawing a pair of bottles. “Gin? Tonic?” He asked.

“That’s allowed?” Percy asked.

“Normally? No. But I’d say this counts as a special case.” Annabeth had to agree. In the span of ninety minutes, they’d gone from a nice walk around campus, to fighting off armed kidnappers, to extracting information from a half-dead son of Tyche. After all that, being offered a drink by the president of the school, who happened to carry around a combination sword-spear-Swiss Army Knife, felt like a natural follow-on. She accepted, glad for something to wet her throat. “Now,” Harkin said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m sure you’ve all got a good many questions.”

“You’re a half-blood?” Annabeth blurted out, too curious to wait. “Who’s your godly parent?”

“I’m honestly surprised you haven’t figured that out for yourself, Annabeth.” He removed his glasses, and looked her right in the eye. His irises were almost black in the dim light, but she saw in them a familiar, iridescent grey. “Though, I do admit, the glasses don’t help on that count.”

“Wait, we’re-“

“Half-siblings, yes.” Harkin smiled, more warmly than she was used to. “I do apologize for not mentioning it earlier, but I’d not had the chance before today.”

Annabeth sat back, stunned. Suddenly, all the oddities she’d noticed fit into place, from the owl statue in the middle of campus and the mascot, right down to how she and Percy had the same room assignment. Had he been pulling strings this whole time? “Gods, that explains a _ton._ ”

“I’d wondered when you’d catch on. You were much quicker than the last child of Athena to pass through here, though that was some years ago, and his mind was wired almost purely for strategy.” He took a sip of gin-and-tonic, ice clinking in his glass. “But, to business. It seems we’ve something of a divine mystery on our hands.”

“Hold up.” Nico raised a hand. “How’d you know about me?”

“I spoke with Chiron, of course. We talk, now and again, and he mentioned the quest you embarked on last summer.”

“Yeah, the one going after the Apple. Which, apparently, is now part of some big conspiracy to resurrect Alastor. Whoever the hell that is.”

“A god of vengeance. Similar to Nemesis, with whom you’ll be more familiar, but much older. In his latter days, the Greeks considered him a mere epithet of Zeus, and, after that, an insult.”

Percy broke in. “Explains why he faded. Kinda like Pan, in a way.”

“Right again. It would seem, however, that Alastor wishes to regain his corporeal form. I don’t see how that’s possible, or even how he’s communicating from Tartarus, but it does appear to be happening.”

“I was able to get a message out of there. Used a shrine to Hermes, but that only worked between it and Camp.”

Harkin shrugged. “I have to imagine that, if Hermes’ shrine can send messages back and forth, there are other means of doing so. Besides, Alastor is a god. One trapped in his essential form, true, but a god nonetheless.”

“So now what?” Nico asked. “There’s two bodies in that storage room and one guy who’ll try to kill us if we let him go.”

Harkin sighed, grimacing. “Leave that to me. No one will be the wiser about what happened, except, of course, for us.” He checked his watch, a silver Swiss chronograph that probably cost a year’s pay at minimum wage. “It’s early enough that you’ll catch the end of dinner if you hurry.” He motioned to Nico. “You as well, if you’d like. Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I’ve business to attend to.”

The next few weeks were, thankfully, as normal as Annebeth could’ve wanted. She went to class, kept up on reading, and generally did her best to enjoy college life. That turned out to be the easiest thing she’d done since arriving. Her architecture classes were way more advanced than the elective she’d taken in high school, and she found herself actually learning new things instead of rehashing concepts she’d read about at age fifteen. She even joined the ultimate frisbee team, in search of something to do between afternoon class and dinner. She ended up being a natural at the sport, and soon made the team’s traveling squad. This meant going to tournaments, usually in the back of the team captain’s minivan. That, in turn, meant upgrading her ancient Nokia to a smartphone. She’d learned through trial and error, combined with some advice from Jake Mason, that she was only in danger if she tried using a phone to talk over the air. Any message she sent that didn’t contain her voice was safe, since monsters couldn’t home in on encoded text. Percy had one already, a birthday gift from his parents, so they were able to stay connected with ease. That ended up being pretty essential at the second tournament she traveled to, when she had a Tartarus dream while sharing a hotel room with half the team. He ended up having to calm her down via text, which worked well enough that she didn’t end up having a second nightmare. Not being able to just call him and talk was frustrating, but it was better than having to explain to five other girls why a hydra had just blown a hole in the wall. At least the girls she woke up were pretty understanding, especially after she gave them the old rock-climbing-accident explanation. Her bad dreams were tapering off in frequency, to the point that she could go for a week or so without having one. When they did come, they were less intense, as if the memory of what had happened down below the Underworld was finally fading. The experience would never leave her, but the occasional bad dream wasn’t such a high price to pay for being alive and happy, so she could only live with it.

“Living with it” turned out to work pretty well. As summer turned to fall, and the campus lost its verdancy in a flaming mess of leaves, Annabeth started to feel the same as she had between when she and Percy got together and when he disappeared. It wasn’t that she didn’t worry about monsters, or school, or any one of the hundred other things that ended up on her mind. She couldn’t avoid those problems any more than she could stop breathing. But, for the first time in years, they stopped mattering. Beating her head against the wall about whether or not Echidna would interrupt her morning run wouldn’t stop it from happening, so why go crazy over the prospect? She had her knife, and a lifetime of experience. School took up a ton of her time, of course, but the work was engaging. There weren’t any filler classes to take time away from the really interesting stuff, even if the amount of reading she had to do made picking up a novel afterward feel more like work than pleasure. She and Percy griped about assignments, of course, but they did it while lying in the same bed or sitting on the campus’ main green. There were no cleaning harpies to dodge, or unhappy goddesses trying to teleport one of them to the West Coast. At long last, they’d found circumstances where they could be together unconditionally, without events they couldn’t control hanging over their heads. If there was a silver lining to the way things had happened since the day she first left home and now, she couldn’t help but think, sharing a stuffy little dorm room with the person she loved was a pretty good one.

It wasn’t that everything was perfect. Percy left his clothing lying around, and she hadn’t realized quite how badly men stank if they didn’t shower for a day or so. But those little problems were just that. Little. A messy floor didn’t put a dent in the feeling she got when they curled up on the bottom bunk to watch _Lord of the Rings_ , or took that damn purple Corvette of his into the city for a day in Central Park. He’d been teaching her to drive it, to the point that she didn’t feel like she was about to blow the clutch out every time she started it on a hill. Even her classes were going well, which surprised her a little. College was supposed to be hard, and it was, but she felt like she was managing just fine. The professors had higher standards for writing and design than she was used to, but they weren’t tight-asses. Compared to high school, it was paradise. The students were just as stuck-up as they’d been at Goode, which was probably a fact of life for anyone whose parents came from the money that it took to send them to private school, but they were all nice enough. And, as an added bonus, they didn’t seem to notice when a trio of armed Italians showed up and tried to abduct someone from between the Humanities building and the computer lab. Annabeth had no idea how President Harkin managed to hush that whole incident up, but no one appeared to know about it. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day of the fight, save for a text message he’d sent her with news that he and Chiron had met. Apparently, there was an operation in the works to gather information about what, precisely, Alastor was trying to do. Neither she nor Percy would be taking part, thank the gods. That hadn’t been a decision either of them got to make, but she was fine with being left out of it. As weird as the idea sounded after years of trying to get selected for one quest or another, she had better things to do than risk her life. Her third-block class was too important to just skip out on, and she really didn’t want to miss Thanksgiving with Paul and Sally. Besides, knowing the Athena cabin, there was some gung-ho kid who wanted nothing more than to show Mom just how good they were at combat or strategy or thinking on their feet by going to Sicily and bringing back Alastor’s head on a plate. Annabeth would be content to do well on the final exam she had in a week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from a Ghost Brigade album. Music is a pretty uniquely-styled mix of genres, but it ends up sounding very nice, and fitting the name of the album well in terms of mood.


	13. The Fires of Olympus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another shorter one, but it's reasonably dense.

Percy 7

Finals weeks _blew._ Chunks. Big, steaming ones, like you found on the front porch of a frat-house after a rager. A paper and a test were bad enough, but working with the promise of winter break hanging over his head was torturous. The whole campus seemed to be in the same bind. The green was deserted, save for a few upstaters who sat outside in the fog and studied, just to get a break from the library. His friends from the rowing team, who usually spent more time in the gym or the commons than they did on academics, disappeared into their rooms or the stacks to get some last-minute work done. As for himself, Percy floated between an isolated corner on the library’s second floor and a pew in the campus chapel. He didn’t go in for the religious stuff, but the little brick building was quiet. He could’ve used his and Annabeth’s room, of course, but going there provided a unique set of problems. She was there, for one. That was great, unless he wanted to not be distracted. Her presence alone made focusing on anything else difficult, and, as appealing as missing dinner for the third night in a week sounded, they both needed to finish their respective mountains of classwork before getting busy on each other became a viable prospect again. At least the material he had to study was interesting. He’d tentatively decided on marine engineering as a major, and, so far, he enjoyed it. The basic concepts all made sense, probably thanks to who his dad was, and the math was slowly getting easier.

The dreaded Wednesday arrived, frigid and windy. Connecticut weather wasn’t much different from the Manhattan sort, but living this close to Long Island Sound made Percy miss being surrounded by skyscrapers. Those at least kept the worst of the wind out, when they weren’t funneling it right into your face. The walk from the mess hall to his classroom, on the third floor of the engineering building, would probably have killed him had he not been wearing the winter coat his mom had insisted he needed back in September. He’d told her not to worry, of course, and she’d bought it anyway. Annabeth seemed fine in the peacoat she’d picked up from a thrift store in town. She said it was German Navy surplus, and the label confirmed that she wasat least right about where it came from. Once out of the wind and up the stairs, Percy found a seat at one of the aluminum tables that served as desks. The professor, a stoop-shouldered skeleton of a man, handed out packets of questions with answer sheets tucked in the middle, explaining that they’d have until eleven to finish as he shuffled around the room. The test covered the last half of the coursework, which meant he’d be answering questions on hull design and the fundamentals of not getting your ship capsized by a wave for two hours.

He and Annabeth met up over lunch. His exam had gone well enough that he knew he’d walk away with a low A in the course, which amazed him. Even a year ago, he’d been a B student in everything but the one or two classes he actually cared about. Marine engineering was fun, but enjoying something didn’t make math or computer models any easier. Annabeth, though, seemed peeved. She ate reluctantly, like she didn’t want to finish and go back out in the cold.

“Your test go alright?” Percy asked, hand on hers.

“Oh, yeah!” She brightened. “Prof really liked my final project, too.”

“What’s up, then? You seem mad.”

She looked at him, blinking like he’d just spilled cola on his jacket. “Today’s the solstice. Got to go to Olympus for the end of the summit tomorrow, and I’d rather not.”

“What do you- oh, that’s right. Shit!” They’d gotten an Iris-message from Chiron at a pretty inopportune time last Friday night, asking if they could show up at the Gods’ annual meeting to brief them on the situation with Alastor. They’d tried to beg off, saying that they didn’t know anything Chiron or President Harkin couldn’t explain for themselves, but the centaur had insisted. And so they’d be spending tonight on campus before making the trip to the City the next day. That meant delaying seeing Percy’s mom and Paul, and missing out on a day of winter break. Percy had been so busy studying that he’d forgotten all about it. “Oh, well. It’s only a day. And we’ve got tonight to ourselves.”

“There is that.” Her eyes narrowed, an impish curl to her lip. “And we can go out for dinner if you want.”

They ended up driving fifteen miles up the Sound, to a Thai place in Groton that one of Percy’s professors had recommended. The man was a retired engineer from the submarine works there, and he’d mentioned the hole-in-the-wall restaurant as being a favorite lunch spot for him and his designer friends. The noodles he ordered were almost unbearably spicy, but he soldiered on. The flavor was more than worth the watery eyes and runny nose. Annabeth tried one bite, downed an entire glass of water, and went back to her rice. The wind had receded by the time they returned to campus, and Annabeth suggested that they walk down to the sound to watch the sunset. Almost all the other students had left that afternoon, bound for wherever they’d spend winter break, so they had the campus’ little beach to themselves. From where they sat, they could just make out the Manhattan skyline, framed in flaming orange by the sunset.

“I could get used to this view.” Annabeth pointed towards the Empire State Building, speaking up to be heard over the crashing waves. “Sure beats living there.”

“Not a fan of tiny apartments?” Percy might’ve been offended once, but, after seven months of suburban living, he got what she was saying. He’d thought of himself as a New Yorker through and through, right up until he moved out of the city. Before then, having a hundred square feet to his name felt like a luxury. But now? He could walk out the dormitory door and see trees and grass, all without dodging the army of joggers and tourists who took over Central Park whenever the weather turned nice. He could sit on a beach with his girlfriend and not have to check the sand for trash or use needles. The streets here were wide and well-kept, and, aside from the incident a few months back, getting mugged in an alley was a remote concern.

“I like those alright. But our dorm doesn’t smell like the neighbor’s bad cooking, and I can sleep without the traffic noise waking me up. Besides, we can still visit anytime.“

“Speaking of, we’ll have to leave at noon to get into town if we’re going to make that meeting on Olympus.” As soon as he said it, Percy knew he’d messed up. Annabeth groaned, and he could see her rolling her eyes even before he glanced over at her.

“Don’t remind me. Please, I’d rather not think about it. _”_

_“_ Sorry. Said the first thing that came to mind, I guess.”

She suppressed a laugh. “It’s fine, don’t worry. Like you said, it’s only a day. But we’re heading straight to your parents’ place after. Your mom said she was making more gnocchi, and I’ve been missing that all semester.”

“Wouldn’t think of going anywhere else.” They’d been home for Thanksgiving, of course, and had some of the best turkey Percy had ever eaten, but winter break wasn’t just a few days off. They had three glorious weeks off, and Percy intended to make the most of them by doing as little as possible.

______

Driving in New York City was bad enough in good weather. Doing it in an afternoon snowstorm was seriously dangerous, especially in the Corvette. If Zeus wanted him dead, then handing him a fishtail-happy sports car and making him drive it on icy Manhattan roads was a good way to get the job done. He narrowly missed a cyclist who took a spill right in front of him, almost got rear-ended by a delivery van, and had to slam on the brakes to avoid a speeding cop car, all within three blocks. Annabeth spent the whole drive with one hand on the dash and the other on his knee, squeezing hard enough that he thought she’d cut off circulation to his foot. Parking was the easiest part of the drive, since snow couldn’t build up onside the multi-story garage they paid $30 for the privilege of entering. Maybe the guy guarding the elevator to Olympus would give them a discount, since they were technically there on business. He didn’t, which figured. Instead, he just blinked, yawned out a halfhearted “welcome to the Empire State Building,” and waved them past his desk when they asked for the six-hundredth floor. The elevator to Olympus had its own antechamber, deserted despite the steady flow of workers heading in and out of their offices. Percy leaned against the wall, glad for the rest. Even with a good night’s sleep, driving in the pea soup outside was tiring work.

“Wonder if they serve coffee at godly summits,” he mused.

“Probably. I know my mom drinks the stuff like water.”

“Good, I could use some.” Then the elevator’s gilded doors slid open, following a _ding_ from the bell mounted above them. “Guess we’d better get going.” For once, Annabeth followed his lead, letting him step through first. Absolutely nothing had changed since he’d last ridden up to Olympus, save for a fresh layer of wax on the floor. The same ratty speakers played the same toneless music, but the ride was smoother and faster than any other elevator in the city. Percy had no idea how high up Mount Olympus was, or even if it occupied the same dimension as the city it floated above. You could see New York from the edge of Olympus, but not the other way around. Of course, that meant that they’d probably passed between planes of reality to the sound of badly-covered Sinatra instrumentals.

Olympus, despite almost being leveled a few years back, looked as old as ever. The smashed temples and ruined pavilions Percy had walked through when he was last here were gone, repaired or replaced with new designs. Most of those, he knew, were Annabeth’s work. She had a certain flair to her designs, an angular precision that set anything she drew apart from the other, older buildings. Still, somehow, everything she’d helped rebuild looked like it belonged. It would’ve been easy, he guessed, to build glass-and-steel monuments to gods who’d chosen to live atop a modern skyscraper, but the entire promenade remained a masterclass in Greek architecture.

The great hall, in contrast to its surroundings, hadn’t changed at all. The same grand Doric columns surrounded the same marbled outer walls, and the gilded doors, flanked by flaming braziers and inlaid with scenes of Olympian triumphs, still towered over him as he and Annabeth crossed the threshold. He squeezed her hand. “Did they let you redesign anything in here?”

“No, all this stayed the same. I got to redo part of the gardens out back, but that’s it.” She pointed at one of the statues lining the entrance hall, a four-foot bust of Artemis done in black marble. “That one was super annoying, though, since she wanted the same sculpture in every one of her temples. All of those are made of some really dark stone, so you can barely see the statue.” They passed more fires, which leapt and crackled as they entered the throne room. Percy felt the heat at his back, and his shoulders tensed. Entering this place almost never ended well, and Percy felt the same electric tension in the air as he had at age twelve, when he’d passed over the same threshold with the Master Bolt in his backpack.

Even with its soaring dome of a ceiling, themain hall was smaller and emptier than Percy remembered from the last solstice he’d been at. Of course, he’d been fourteen at the time, and the gods had been voting on whether or not to vaporize him. They were less likely to try that again, at least. Athena had never been happy with him and Annabeth being an item, but she wasn’t given to rash outbursts. Or spontaneous javelin-throwing. Hopefully. In any event, the only seats full at this meeting were the twelve godly thrones. Hestia sat by her hearth, but the benches lining the chamber walls were empty. Chiron stood in the shadows, between a pair of thick-based columns. They joined him, careful to stay well out of the gods’ way.

“Have much trouble getting here?” Their old mentor asked, turning towards them. He’d ditched his wheelchair, opting for a reddish-grey blazer. Percy, who’d opted for warmth over style, felt decidedly underdressed in his fleece-lined canvas jacket. At least Annabeth looked like she’d thought about her outfit. She would’ve looked good in anything, of course, but her peacoat seemed chosen for the occasion.

“No, unless you count the other drivers,” Annabeth answered. “Only almost spun twice.”

Chiron shook his head. “Driving is one mortal pleasure I’m glad to avoid. Thankfully, Argus got me here in one piece. And just in time, too. Seems the Olympians are nearly finished for the day.”

The assembled gods looked about ready to call for a recess. Zeus sipped something sweet-smelling from a goblet the size of a kitchen sink. Most of the others, save for Athena and Artemis, were drinking as well. Ares, dressed in an American officer’s uniform, toyed with a bayonet he’d pulled off the oversized rifle that sat propped against his throne. An undersized fire burned in Hestia’s hearth, leaving the chamber cold and inhospitable. The whole affair reminded Percy more of a fraternity meeting than a conclave of the most powerful beings on the planet.

Zeus glanced down at a sheaf of papers. “And now, to the last matter of the day before we break for some well-deserved refreshment, it seems that a god, known as ‘Alastor,” wishes to return to the world of the living. We will hear a summary of the problem, etcetera, etcetera, and then decide on a course of action.” He waved Chiron forward, lazy and dismissive. “You have been doing much research into this… situation, so please.” He yawned. “Enlighten us.”

Annabeth leaned over. “They don’t even know who he is!” She whispered, aghast. “Shit, even _I_ knew that!” 

Chiron stepped forward, hooves echoing on the marble floor. “There isn’t all that much we can say for sure.” He raised his voice in the same tone he used when explaining the rules to Capture the Flag, but the throne room made his voice sound hollow, less vital. Ninety seconds into his speech, at least half the assembled gods had visibly stopped caring what he said. Ares went back to messing with his bayonet. Hera and Zeus held a whispered conversation, leaning close to each other so no one else could hear. Apollo tuned his lute, muttering under his breath about bad strings. Dionysus, surprisingly enough, listened intently.

Once Chiron finished, he bowed and retreated back into the entrance hall. As he approached, his neutral expression slid into a scowl. He stopped, turning back to face the semicircle of thrones.

“Well,” he said, lighting a pipe he’d seemingly produced from nowhere, “at least they know about the problem. Whether they do anything is its own question.”

Annabeth shook her head. “It’s hopeless, at this rate. Half of them aren’t listening, and the others won’t agree on what to do.” She was whispering, but the hall’s acoustics meant that Percy heard her like she was right next to him and not four feet away. And, just as she predicted, the godly conference devolved into bickering. Zeus didn’t even try to keep order, so engrossing was his conversation with Hera, that Athena had to take over after three minutes of discordant babbling. She raised a finger, and the great hall went silent. Even Zeus, who now showed more interest in his drink than the proceedings, turned to face her. As she spoke, the air hummed and crackled with barely-contained force. The hearth fire grew into a radiant blaze, feeding off the unease in the room, and Percy had to unbutton his jacket to stop from sweating.

“Enough speculation. We must ascertain Alastor’s motive for returning before we can make any judgment as to the danger he poses. Does his rising pose any threat, or does he merely desire to live in the physical world again?”

“I’m afraid we aren’t sure.” Chiron sounded certain of that, at least. “We’re aware that he plans to return, but we know little else.”

“And what have you to say, my daughter?” Annabeth blinked, startled, but she stepped forward anyway. Her voice echoed off the walls and ceiling, cool and confident and somehow amplified, despite the fact that she was speaking normally.

“All I can say for sure is that he wants to come back. He sent men after Nico di Angelo, and they wanted him alive. Wanted to exchange him for Alastor, believing that Lord Hades would make such a deal.” Percy glanced over at the King of the Dead, whose lip twitched when Annabeth mentioned Nico. That was more emotion than Hades usually let show, and he had to wonder if the man actually cared about his kid. Most gods flat-out didn’t, treating their half-blood byblows as annoyances and not much else. Some of them, his own father included, at least tried to be present for the big stuff. Poseidon had been in the crowd when he graduated high school, and was uncannily good at popping up whenever he needed advice on a really big, life-altering problem. Even Athena, who didn’t seem to pay Annabeth or any of her other children much attention, sent them aid when they needed it. Annabeth was still talking, going over what she knew about the European half-bloods and their meeting place, so he tried to pay attention to how the other gods were reacting. Athena was engaged, of course, as was Ares. Someone was talking about a fight, and that always drew his attention. Apollo might has well not have been in the room. Hera was half-asleep, Poseidon seemed alert, and Zeus was leafing through his stack of papers. Once Annabeth finished, it took him about ten seconds to look up, blink, glance around the room, and shrug.

“The way I see it, we have no reason to intervene. And, frankly, no way to do so unless one of our number,” he thrust his jaw at Hades, “is willing to travel to Tartarus and handle matters himself. As such, I cannot see a point in further discussion. Does anyone object?”

Annabeth started to speak, but her mother got the first word in. “Lord Zeus, can you not see the problem with allowing this to occur?”

The king of the gods shook his head. “The worst case is that a minor god, of no importance whatsoever, returns. I see no reason why this would cause trouble.”

“Then you miss the obvious point.” Athena pursed her lips, eyes narrow. She looked like every disappointed teacher Percy had ever stood in front of, trying to explain why he’d pushed the other boy at recess or failed the quiz. Just, taller. And able to zap him to dust at any given moment. “Let us, for a moment, imagine that Alastor _does_ manage to return. He will have done nothing more than demonstrate that one can regain a physical form, when they were once trapped in their elemental state. Do we truly desire that Kronos, and Gaea, and any of the other malcontents trapped in Tartarus, gain the knowledge to do the same? The place is a prison from whence very few have ever come alive. I do not wish to see that change.”

Zeus groaned, looking like he wanted nothing more than to flick a lightning bolt in Athena’s general direction. “Fine. In that case, we will vote. All in favor of acting, in some fashion, on this problem?” Four hands went up, from Athena, Poseidon, Artemis, and, of all people, Hephaestus. “All opposed?” Seven hands. Hera was now fast asleep. The Queen of Heaven looked rather less regal with drool hanging out the side of her mouth. She startled awake when Zeus clapped his hands. Sounding far more jovial, he shouted, “in that case, the first day of our summit is at an end! We shall retire to the gardens forthwith!”

Annabeth didn’t speak until she and Percy were well away from the throne room. She stalked out the entrance hall, leaving him to trail behind her. He followed, staying quiet all the while. There was no way to calm her down when she got like this, so he didn’t try. Climbing the trail behind the main complex of buildings took the wind out of him, but he kept up. The air helped, being as clean and cool as it was. He’d always assumed that Olympus air would suck, given that it filtered up from New York City, but right now he might as well have been halfway up a mountain out West. A half-hour of walking brought them to a grassy ledge above the main row of temples, looking towards the elevator doors. Annabeth stopped a few feet from the edge, hands on her hips. Percy slipped an arm around her, and she didn’t complain. Even leaned in after a few minutes, head coming to rest on his shoulder. She didn’t seem all that talkative, so he stood there and took in what turned out to be an astounding view. Their ledge was part of the mountain that gave Olympus its name, and they were currently higher up than even the Parthenon-esque temple that held the gods’ throne room. He could see the entire Olympian garden spread before him, overshadowed by the great temple and its towering columns. The garden itself was a maze of hedges and vines, laid out in a sprawling circle around a central fountain. Beyond the outer layer of bushes, grassy hills disappeared into the distance. Gravel paths lined with neat little fences wound between them, leading to houses of all shapes, colors, and designs. Those must’ve been where some of the minor gods lived, he realized. The sun was low in the West, sending shadows racing towards them.

“You realize they don’t care about any of us, right?” Percy startled. Annabeth sounded calm and detached, like she was asking about the weather.

“I mean, have they ever? Like, as a whole?”

“No. I’m sure they all care about their own kids, at least a little, but as a group? We’re the soldiers in the trenches, and they’re Haig, safe at home in England.”

He blinked. “Who?”

“Old English general. Doesn’t matter. You get the point.”

The metaphor made sense even without knowing who General Haig was. “Yeah, somehow I can’t imagine them coming down to help us unless they’re really invested in whatever it is we’re doing.” He felt bad even thinking in those terms, since his dad was pretty involved by godly standards, but Annabeth had a point. A damn good one, really.

“It just sucks, like, you almost get killed finding out about this stuff the way Nico and Jason did, or you get jumped in broad daylight, and all they do is say that it’s not worth dealing with because they don’t see a risk to themselves?” Her jaw clenched. Percy’s hand found hers, and he looked her in the face until she returned his gaze.

“You don’t have to solve all this yourself, Beth. It’s not our problem anymore.”

She scowled, turning away from him. “I know, but that isn’t the point. We’ll be part of solving it, you can bet your ass. You’re the hero of Olympus, and I’m the one who rebuilt half of it. You think they won’t want us front and center as soon as Alastor or whoever-the-fuck-else shows up and needs dealing with? Is letting us have a little peace too much to ask?” Shaking her head, she stirred. Paced across the grass. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” She turned back towards him, but Percy was already going to her, pulling her close.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. She was shaking. Not the quivers she got after a nightmare, but tight, angry tremors. His hand threaded through the hair at the back of her neck. That usually calmed her down, and it worked after a long moment. She let out a long, unhappy breath, and sat down. He joined her, cross-legged in the tall, dewy grass.

“It’s not, but there’s nothing we can do. We’ll go home, things will settle down, and then something new will happen. You know how it is.”

_______

Athena’s warning about Alastor and his plans was stuck in Percy’s head for the rest of the day. It was distracting enough that he had to force himself to pay attention to the road on the way out of Manhattan, and not even the welcome-home dinner his mom cooked could kick him all the way back into the moment. He really hadn’t thought it possible that someone like Kronos could ever come back from Tartarus, not once their essence was scattered to the winds, but the prospect now felt uncomfortably viable. If a minor god could talk to his followers from the Underworld, and maybe even plan an escape, then couldn’t an all-powerful titan do the same thing? He shook his head, feeling his hair catch in Annabeth’s sweater. After dinner and a movie, they’d retreated to his room. They lay on the bed, watching the last of the Colts game on his little television.

“You OK there?” She shifted her arms, letting him sit up.

“Yeah, sorry. Just got stuck thinking, I guess.”

“What about?”

“What your mom said, back on Olympus. About someone like Kronos coming back from Tartarus, and how that would be easier for him do if he learned it was possible.”

“Yeah, that’s been bothering me, too. But I don’t think we have much to worry about.”

“Why not? She sounded pretty urgent.”

“Yeah, but she’s a goddess. Time doesn’t really work the same for her as it does for us. Kronos took thousands of years to come back the last time, and, even if he figured out how to do it again, he won’t be coherent enough to even process thought for a few millennia. Same goes for Gaea, if she ever gets herself back together at all. For an immortal, that timescale isn’t super long, but none of us will be around to care.”

“Well, I guess that’s comforting.” The thought of Kronos showing up again made Percy want to puke. If it had to happen though, a few thousand years seemed like a good long time to wait before it did. He lay back. Her arms settled around his shoulders, holding him close. “Any of them coming back is a shitty thought, but if it’s gotta happen, then…”

“Better that it’s a long time after we’re gone. I get what you mean.”

“Where does that leave us, then?” As much as he wanted to just forget about this whole Alastor thing, to move on with his life, that just felt _wrong._ Like he was trying to get out of some duty he couldn’t avoid.

“Right here, for now, and I don’t intend on going anywhere.” He felt her draw him closer, rest her chin on the top of his head.

He couldn’t quite describe the way she felt, because a few words never managed to capture it. Warm? Comforting? Alluring? All of the above? He’d never be able to capture it all without writing a book, and that would never happen, so he settled for an “I love you” and a hand draped over top of hers. He felt her sigh, heard her contented murmur as she laid her head back on the pillows.

“Love you too.” And, in that moment, all was well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Shadowkiller song the title comes from isn't that easy to find unless you listen to the whole album, which is worth doing.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs-as-titles is a complete cliche, but it's fun. Will post title sources and the relevant artists in the chapter notes. Maybe an occasional brief review of the music referenced.


End file.
